Displaying 1 of 1 2006 Format: Book Author: Earley, Pete. Title: Crazy : a father's search through America's mental health madness / Pete Earley. Publisher, Date: New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, c2006. Description: 372 p. ; 24 cm. Subjects: Mentally ill -- Biography. Mental illness -- Case studies. Mentally ill -- Family relationships. Mental illness. Parent and child. LCCN: 2005050986 ISBN: 0399153136 9780399153136 OCLC: 60824246 System Availability: 1 # System items in: 1 # Local items: 1 # Local items in: 1 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Awards Large Cover Image Trade Reviews Library Journal ReviewLike 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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly ReviewSuffering 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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved Librarian's View Displaying 1 of 1
