FIND it deeply saddening to read reports such as Rob Robertson's (April 29), regarding the resistance of the local community in Mount Vernon to the establishment of supported accommodation for people with mental-health problems.

If it were not reprehensible enough that the campaigners ride their argument on the specious grounds that the children at the local school would be under some threat, more appalling was their reference to the Cullen Report to justify their own narrow prejudices. Thomas Hamilton was not mentally ill and the Cullen Report is not concerned with community care.

As with any chronic illness, the main tragedy with mental illness is the fact that many of the people affected are deprived of leading their lives as fully as they otherwise might and, conversely, that society is denied their valuable contributions.

For the people concerned, it is true that the features of an illness like schizophrenia, for example, are extremely distressing and disabling, but these symptoms are of negligible importance compared with the inevitable accompanying feeling of exclusion from normal society, which is felt acutely by both the sufferer and the carers. This exclusion is exacerbated by reports in the tone of the one published in your newspaper.

The children's opportunity to develop into wholesome and happy people is much more threatened by their parents who are involved in the campaign, than by the proposed residents of the supported accommodation.

Ursula Ryan,

Ellerburn Cottage,

Burnside Orchard,

Crossford, Carluke.

April 30.