Congratulations on your March 6 editorial, "Mentally ill need real help -- not a bus ticket." I never quite agreed with President Reagan's closing of the asylums and putting the patients on the street with a prescription. And I recognized at an early time, with the growth of "street people," that too many of them were people who would have been better off in an asylum.

I believe that Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is on the right track and hope that he will stay with it.

Ramo Parola

Fresno