No one cares about crazy people : the chaos and heartbreak of mental health in America

Author

Ron Powers

Call Number

• 362.26 P8886 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Hachette Books, 2017.

Physical Description

xxi, 360 pages ; 24 cm

Summary

How did we, as a society, get to this point? It's a question that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Powers set out to answer in this gripping, richly researched social and personal history of mental illness. Powers traces the appalling narrative--from the sadistic abuse of "lunaticks" at Bedlam Asylum in London seven centuries ago to today's scattershot treatments and policies. His odyssey of reportage began after not one but both of his beloved sons were diagnosed with schizophrenia. From the earliest efforts to segregate the "mad" in society, to the wily World War II-era social engineers who twisted Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory to fit a much darker agenda, to the follies of the antipsychiatry movement (starring L. Ron Hubbard and his gifted, insanity-denying compatriot Thomas Szasz), we've struggled to deal with mental health care for generations. And it all leads to the current landscape, in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted loved ones without proper public policies or support. Braided into his vivid social history is the moving saga of Powers's own family: his bright, buoyant sons, Kevin (a gifted young musician) and Dean (a promising writer and guitarist), both of whom struggled mightily with schizophrenia; and his wife, Honoree Fleming, whose knowledge of human biology and loving maternal instincts proved inadequate against schizophrenia's hellish power. For Powers the question of "what to do about crazy people" isn't just academic; it's deeply personal. And he's determined to forge a better way forward, for his family's sake as well as for the many others who deserve better.

Contents

• Membrane
• What is schizophrenia?
• Regulars
• Bedlam, before and beyond
• Eugenics: weeding out the mad
• "A more normal world"
• "When they were young"
• Madness and genius
• "If only, if only, if only . . ."
• Chaos and heartbreak
• The great unraveler
• Surcease
• Debacle
• "Hey fam-- "
• Antipsychotics
• "Something unexplainable"
• "We have done pitifully little about mental illnesses"
• "Primoshadino"
• Red Sox 17, Yankees 1
• Insanity and Icarus
• Someone cares about crazy people.