Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness

by Pete Earley Narrated by Michael Prichard

Overview

Pete Earley had no idea. He'd been a journalist for over thirty years, and the author of several award-winning-even bestselling-nonfiction books about crime and punishment and society. Yet he'd always been on the outside looking in. He had no idea what it was like to be on the inside looking out until his son, Mike, was declared mentally ill, and Earley was thrown headlong into the maze of contradictions, disparities, and catch-22s that is America's mental health system.



The more Earley dug, the more he uncovered the bigger picture: Our nation's prisons have become our new mental hospitals. Crazy tells two stories. The first is his son's. The second describes what Earley learned during a yearlong investigation inside the Miami-Dade County jail, where he was given complete, unrestricted access. There, and in the surrounding community, he shadowed inmates and patients; interviewed correctional officers, public defenders, prosecutors, judges, mental-health professionals, and the police; talked with parents, siblings, and spouses; consulted historians, civil rights lawyers, and legislators.



The result is both a remarkable piece of investigative journalism, and a wake-up call-a portrait that could serve as a snapshot of any community in America.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Suffering delusions from bipolar disorder, Mike Earley broke into a stranger's home to take a bubble bath and significantly damaged the premises. That Mike's act was viewed as a crime rather than a psychotic episode spurred his father, veteran journalist Pete Earley (Family of Spies), to investigate the "criminalization of the mentally ill." Earley gains access to the Miami-Dade County jail where guards admit that they routinely beat prisoners. He learns that Deidra Sanbourne, whose 1988 deinstitutionalization was a landmark civil rights case, died after being neglected in a boarding house. A public defender describes how he-not always happily-helps mentally ill clients avoid hospitalization. Throughout this grim work, Earley uneasily straddles the line between father and journalist. He compromises his objectivity when for most of his son's ordeal-Mike gets probation-he refuses to entertain the possibility that the terrified woman whose home Mike trashed also is a victim. And when, torn between opposing obligations, he decides not to reveal to a source's mother that her daughter has gone off her medications, he endangers the daughter's life and betrays her mother. Although this is mostly a sprawling retread of more significant work by psychologist Fuller Torrey and others, parents of the mentally ill should find solace and food for thought in its pages. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Like Paul Raeburn in Acquainted with the Night: A Parent's Quest To Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children, former Washington Post reporter Earley (Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program) penetrates the American mental health system in an effort to discover how he can save his son, Mike, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after suffering a breakdown during his senior year in college. Mike's situation escalates when, delusional, he breaks into a home to take a bubble bath and runs up against the criminal justice system. Appalled by the barbarous illogicality of laws that allow mentally ill people like Mike to be punished yet languish untreated, Earley visits prisons, courthouses, hospitals, and assisted-living facilities to explore his options and to expose "mental health madness." In particular, he criticizes the deinsitutionalization movement that released masses of the mentally ill from hospitals and abandoned them to the streets. He also advocates the reform of laws that permit mentally ill patients to refuse treatment and/or medication, even though illness impedes their ability to make competent decisions regarding their own health. Highly recommended for all public and university collections.-Lynne Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Seasoned investigative journalist Earley (Super Casino, 2000, etc.) splices together the story of his son's alarming brush with the law and a report on our society's criminalization of the mentally ill. The author was so upset by what happened to his son after he was arrested for breaking into a house while in a delusional state that he set out to discover just how the mental-health system works in America today. What he found is that the new insane asylums are prisons, neither safe nor humane places. In Miami-the city was chosen for Earley's investigation because it has a high percentage of mentally ill residents-the author was given wide access to the Miami-Dade County Jail. He spent a year there observing how mentally ill prisoners are treated. He followed their cases through the courts and traced their progress once they were back on the streets. Earley also interviewed a Miami judge, lawyers, psychiatrists, patient advocates and the founder of a halfway house. He draws a bleak and disturbing picture. The closing of state mental hospitals that began in the 1960s left most patients homeless and without access to the community services that were supposed to form their new safety net, he reports; by the 1990s, jails and prisons were being swamped by psychotic prisoners. Society has gone backwards in it handling of the mentally ill, he argues, and we must develop modern long-term treatment facilities where they can be helped and kept safe. The author's own frustrating experience with his son convinced him that commitment laws are heavily biased in favor of patients' civil rights and against intervention and treatment; he urges bringing doctors and patients' loved ones back into thedecision-making process. An urgent plea for change that gains force by putting a human face on a sociological problem.

From the Publisher

Praise for Crazy

“A combination of old-fashioned muckraking and genuine empathy...an important manifesto.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Parents of the mentally ill should find solace and food for thought in [this book’s] pages.”—Publishers Weekly

“A case for major policy reform...a harrowing account of a father trying to obtain treatment for his adult son.”—San Antonio Express News

“Crazy is a godsend. It will open the minds of many who make choices for the mentally ill. Countless numbers of us owe Pete Earley and his son Mike a great debt.”—Patty Duke

DEC 06/JAN 07 - AudioFile

A journalist with a seriously mental ill son tells the chilling story of how difficult it was to find people and institutions that could help them. The larger story, told with equal grace and thoroughness, is that U.S. prisons and jails are increasingly warehousing people not reached by the mental health system. Michael Prichard’s narration is classy and restrained. Letting the story itself remain prominent, he sounds concerned but never strays into melodrama. The struggles with the son’s bipolar illness are heart-wrenching; the boy is always of the verge of spinning out of control. Yet the intensity of the author’s personal story didn’t prevent him from writing a balanced investigation on the broader issues. T.W. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171239107
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/04/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	805,850

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