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Book Report
Social Problems
Book: Crazy: A Fathers Search Through Americas Mental Health Madness by: Pete Earley
Summary: Crazy: A Fathers Search Through Americas Mental Health Madness is a book that
identifies, further explains, and enlightens its readers to the horrifying details of mental illness.
After a father learns his son has a schizophrenia and is forced to deal with the corrupt and
underdeveloped mental health care in this country, he sets out to find and uncover the stories of
other individuals who are living the potential future of his son. What he discovers is awful and
heartbreaking. While most people believe the mentally ill are receiving the help and resources
they need while being housed in a nice hospital, Pete Earley presents the truth about these poor
outcasts in our society. They are not being treated like humans or even being treated at all. This
book digs into the details behind our current system and how it came to be. Earley researches
various cases and talks to individuals as he personally visits the institutions that are holding the
mentally ill. He sheds light on a subject that, while it is very important and worth addressing, is
often undermined by other problems such as poverty. What is misunderstood, however, is that a
good majority of our homeless are, in fact, mentally ill people who have been thrown on the
street, forced to survive on their own without anything. Earley creates a haven of empathy for
personally interviewing individuals, visiting institutions, and reflecting on his own life and
experiences with mental illness in his family. This source could be considered biased because the
author is emotionally connected to this topic, but he has done a very good job of looking at all
aspects of the topic and different views regarding mental illness. He is very passionate about
what he has to say because it does hit home, but that doesnt make his research and information
any less reliable. If anything, I think it is more reliable because he is so passionate and invested
in coming to a complete understanding of this social problem. There are a few goals that I have
interpreted from this book. One, is that the author wants to created an awareness of the horrors
that surround us. He wants the community to take a stand and make a difference. Second, he
began doing all this research because of his own personal experience with our broken system
regarding the mentally ill, therefore, another goal is that he wanted to raise awareness of how
common it is and what mental illness does to families and how little help they are given. He
wants to justify his son and his actions while creating some form of justice for all those that are
Facts:
1. Each inmate in the C-wing of the Miami Jail was given an average of 12.7 seconds of
attention.
2. Miami has a larger percentage of mentally ill residents than any other major metropolitan
area (9%)
3. Hundreds of mentally ill prisoners spend 24 hours a day in stark and filthy nakedness
and those who are well enough to work slave away for 12 hours a day, often-times
5. Many mentally ill individuals are arrested more than 10 times in their lifetime, often the
6. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) bills itself as the nations voice on
7. Abilify (more effective and less expensive drug than Zyprexa- $500 per month) became
the more desired drug used in mental institutions and jails. It cost $250 to $350 a month.
Money is always the concern and it was believed that budget cuts could be taken from the
8. Most mentally ill people are arrested and put in jails rather than given the medical
attention and resources they need. Hospitals often only hold patients for a few days due to
9. By the end of its first year of duty, the CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) in Memphis had
10. In Alabama, a young girl had been locked inside a wooden cage for months at a state
hospital and employees had used electric cattle prods to torture patients.
11. There were 507 chronically mentally ill street dwellers in Miami.
12. Alice Ann Collyer had been in jail, the state forensic hospital, and riding on a bus for
13. The cost of caring for a chronically mentally ill patient in a Florida hospital in 2001 was
Quotes:
1. If you ask most people today where the mentally ill are in our society, they will tell you
theyre in state mental hospitals. They are wrongthey are in our jails and prisons. -
2. Our loved ones are not in denial of their mental illness, they are unable to recognize that
the feelings, voices, delusions, or irrational thoughts they are experiencing are due to
malfunctions in their brains frontal lobes. Put simply, their brians dont tell them they
are sick. In fact, they tell them just the opposite-that everything is fine. -Rachel Diaz
3. There is no magical pill out. The most important thing ful all of us to remember is that
our loved ones are sick. They did not ask for these diseases any more than we ask to get
the flu. Remember, too, that we are not the victims. We suffer because we care, but the
4. On the streets, the police saw the mentally ill as dangerous, unpredictable lunatics. In
the hospital, they saw those same people on medication and realized they were someones
5. The Supreme Court decided that mentally ill persons had the right to refuse medical
treatment, including the taking of antipsychotic drugs, which were being overprescribed
History:
1. In 1960 Kennedy and Congress made a lot of promises, such as, creating a national
network of community mental health centers. These promises were not kept and money
that was set aside to fund these potential health centers were used elsewhere. On October
31, 1963, Kennedy signed a national mental health law that authorized Congress to spend
up to $3 billion to construct a national network of community mental health centers. It
2. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) made it almost
impossible to get any records on mentally ill patients and inmates who needed attention.
The author was unable to access files to further his research. The mentally ill individuals
HIPPA rights were also being violated by the prisons as ID papers are given to the
doctors of the prisons and attached on the front of each persons cell. No one inside the
jail had come up with a better way of keeping track of its prisoners, nor did they really
care.
3. 1980 was a big year for the mentally ill, and not in a good way. When Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro emptied his mental hospitals into the waves of Cuban refugees fleeing to
Florida from the port of Mariel, the percentage of mentally ill in Miami increased
dramatically by 306 percent. Hospitals were not prepared at all causing overcrowding,
4. Between 1960 and 1980, the number of patients in state institutions plunged from more
than 500,000 to under 100,000. This was called deinstitutionalization. It caused a social
disaster as the patients were thrown out into the world without any connections to help or
community services. They were left to starve and new centers were never financed. They
filled up the streets and began to populate jails. They were no longer sent to hospitals.
This caused overcrowding in the jails where little-to-no help is available to its inmates.
5. Floridas Baker Act of 1972 spelled out when a person could be forced into a mental
hospital. (page 144) It was too restrictive and made it so many individuals who needed
help but, because of their mental illness, werent always aware of their condition and
would often think that they didnt need help or, in the authors sons case, were
convinced that the pills were poison. Family members were not allowed to take their
loved ones to hospitals and receive help unless the mentally ill patient accepted. Without
their consent, no matter how extreme their condition, they would not be admitted into the
6. In 1960 Dr. Birnbaums right to treatment theory was published. It was focused on the
premise that mental patients in state hospitals have a constitutional right to treatment. It
gave mentally ill a legal right to demand adequate health care. At the time of this theory,
most patients were locked up in hospitals against their will. They were not discharged
until improvement was made. There were no treatment programs, however, so they were
practically being condemned to a life sentence in prison. This caused an extreme outburst
of questions and concerns regarding this idea. If a state couldnt lock up a person
because he was mentally ill, then at what point could it intervene? It has been unclear
since and the laws have made it almost impossible to allow families, who are searching
the best care for their mentally ill member, to get them the help they need because all the
power has been given to the mentally ill individual. What started out as a good idea
quickly backfired.
7. The Sanbourne v. Chiles case. This is a very important case that caused a lot of
awareness. It was very unfair and Deidra Sanbourne was treated with incredible
carelessness. The family was put through the worst process and caused much heartache
for Deidra, as well as her family. (pages 188-207) She was promised a life that was never
available to her, yet the state and health care officials did nothing to help her. They didnt
treat her like a human. She wasnt well enough to live on her own without any form of
supervision, yet was told she could. This caused more bad than good. They had
convinced her that she had the ability to be a full functioning individual who didnt have
a chronic mental illness, yet they got her hopes up and they were immediately shut down.
This girl eventually passed away without any family with her to comfort her as her body
failed.
Social Class: The emergence of social class among the mentally ill is very obvious. They are at
the bottom of the line and, without help, have no hope of climbing any higher. Everyone,
especially the prison guards, believe and know that they have a higher status and, therefore, treat
the mentally ill accordingly. They are often treated worse than animals in a zoo and are then
Stigma: Throughout the book, there are a few stigmatisms that surface. To name a few:
Dangerous, incapable, stupid, inhumane, psychotic, mentally unstable, inadequate, mental, crazy,
threatening to society, disgusting, criminals. All individuals struggling with mental illness are
often stigmatized and labeled as one or many of these words. They are seen as completely
different from the norm of society and are often cast out because of these differences. People
are so quick to judge and, as the book discusses, often see them as inflicting their differences
upon themselves intentionally. People dont realize that mental illness is not a choice and is in
fact an illness that is a chemical imbalance within ones brain. This cannot be reversed or
changed and the consequences of this cause mentally ill to be cast out and avoided.
Intersectionality:
1. Gender is discussed in the book regarding the prisons that hold the mentally ill. Males
and females are kept apart, often in different institutions. This is so no one is abused,
sexually harassed, or taken advantage of. Both genders are treated poorly and are usually
left naked in their cells, isolated from others, sometimes even without a blanket to keep
them warm in the freezing cells. Another role that gender plays in the book is the
relationship between inmates and nurses/doctors as well as relationships among the staff.
Women are treated with little respect and authority. The male inmates often will yell
profane things at the nurses or talk to them in an inappropriate way. Among the staff,
however, the men are fully aware of what they are doing and its not respectful. They
look at women as being the weaker help and not able to defend themselves. The men will
often abuse the inmates and ask the women to leave knowing they wont be opposed to
that. However, there was an instance where one of the nurses stood up for the inmate and
2. Mental illness does not come at a specific age. Someone could be born with an illness or
develop it throughout their lifetime. It is not any better to be born with an illness or
develop it because either way, your life is inevitably altered and affected, as well as those
closest to you. Children do not have the ability to refuse care because they are still under
parent supervision and not legally an adult. Legal adults, on the other hand, can refuse
medication or help and often do because their illness tells them that they are not sick. I
personally think that the older you are the more difficult it is for you because, often, you
are completely on your own without parents to care for you. You couldve worked hard
your whole life to be where you are today and then in an instant, it would be gone and
theres nothing you can do to stop it. It is such a sad thing and no one should have to
3. Lastly, ability is discussed a lot, mostly because this book is focused on mental illness
and how it causes the inability for one to have complete control over their life. While
some can depend on drugs to keep them lucid and functioning, there are so many who
have not been helped and their mental ability to find that help is limited. They often lack
the social skills needed to search out information and have been labeled as crazy or
dangerous, creating a great separation between them and the average individual.
Mental illness causes many things such as: the loss of the ability to control ones
emotions, a loss of every day skills like going to the restroom and putting on clothes, the
inability to carry out complex and even simple tasks, the inability to keep a job, maintain
a healthy, everyday lifestyle and so many more things. Ability becomes a foreign topic to
the mentally ill as the right help is not given to them and as the progress towards change
Reflection: Reading this book has been an incredible experience. I couldnt put it down because
of how emotionally invested one immediately becomes in just the first chapter of the book. I had
no idea any of these issues were going on and how little was being done to help. I dont think
Ive ever viewed mentally ill in this light and it pains me to think about the lives these people
have been forced to live. Nobody deserves this and families shouldnt be torn apart. The author
has been through some of the hardest times emotionally and I cant even imagine what its like to
work with our current systems and limited sources we have established for the mentally ill. This
book was not happy but it was incredibly insightful and full of so much information and love.
There is no way someone could read this and not feel the sudden urge to do everything they can
to help these people, even the ones in our community, get the help and attention they need. I
never knew things were this bad for people struggling through life with mental illnesses. I cant
believe our government is so insensitive to just let these people live on the streets and be tortured
by their own mind, rather than do all they can to give them a new and better life.
References
Anon. n.d. Citation Machine automatically generates citations in MLA, APA, Chicago,
(http://www.citationmachine.net/).
Earley, Pete. 2006. Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness.