Product Description
Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it was only when his own son-in the throes of a manic episode-broke into a neighbor’s house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law.
This is the Earley family’s compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the “revolving doors” between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience-and into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way…. More >>
Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:40 am
Don’t get me wrong, I love books… just not this one.
This one was crazy, all right. A little too crazy. I was completely unexpectant of the full craziness of this book. In the beginning, when he’s talking about mental health madness, I was like, “what now?”
Don’t buy it… unless you like a little crazy in your life. I know I don’t.
Rating: 1 / 5
September 2nd, 2010 at 5:10 am
The author told a truthful, open and thought provoking story. It seemed like it took me forever to get through the book. The topic was up my alley but the story didn’t seem to keep me interested for long periods of time.
Rating: 1 / 5
September 2nd, 2010 at 7:19 am
Book is a sparkling reminder of what journalism, so-called, in the US of A is composed. We’ve become way too accustomed to tangential solutions to problems, & Pete Earley doesn’t disappoint: it makes perfect Cartesian dualist sense for the author to hustle on down to Miami to “study” mental illness & the “mental health system” while his son wrestles with his emotional demons back in Virginia.
If he’s confounded by his son’s baffling behavior & by his inability to “understand,” then, by all means, flash your press card & get “complete run of the [Miami-Dade County] jail…with no restrictions.” Were we not inured to this sort of professional conduct on the part of our journalists & other proselytes of the dominant philosophy, we might easily ponder why a father would abdicate his parental responsibility; indeed, abdicate his humanity.
As Mr. Earley notes, this has all been done before, ever since Quakers discovered compassion was missing from the care of our most desperately & forcibly dispassioned. According to Mr. Earley, if we can replace compassion with forced treatment, then all’s right with the world. “Crazy” is yet another stellar example of the party line commandment: thou shalt live statistically & scientifically, even if by force.
Like all his brethren with their easy, unquestioned access to the public, Mr. Earley succumbs to the inessential details: the medication his son sporadically took turned his mouth dry & killed his sex drive; meanwhile, the old man is bending every effort to get his 20-something son committed to any psychiatric facility, even to the point of lying. Mr. Earley is so busy manipulating the system that any semi-conscious reader might start wondering how long he’d been manipulating the desperate son & indeed all his loved ones, so-called; however, that certainly will never occur to Mr. Earley. But he is worried about that sex drive.
The dissenters from the orthodox view of mental illness, like Laing & Szasz, are quickly dispatched. E. Fuller Torrey, with his Maslow-like (& hence impersonal) hierarchy of disorders, is sanctified. All the dispassionate objectivity of law & science must be brought to bear on the insidious disease, although Laing wrote in his memoir that the decision to be objective is a subjective decision. & Even when author Earley allows himself a moment of subjectivity–asking his St. Paul, Judge Leifman (self-appointed legal benefactor of the mentally ill), “Why are you doing this?”–, he cannot be so careless with his own son, for it’s a question he never asks him.
A serious, questioning reading of “Crazy” can reveal that Mr. Earley exhibits the same symptoms as his son: there is indeed a stigma attached to mental illness (it carries a “life sentence of its own”), but it is an illness like diabetes or the flu; he & his associates manipulate the legal system so that “Mike” can plead guilty to misdemeanors & pursue his career dream, even while Mr. Earley insists that the illness is a life sentence & admits that the stigma attached to it bars his son from pursuing that dream (significantly, Mr. Earley never reveals precisely what that dream career is). & Most telling: this schizophrenia with which his son has been diagnosed is due to a chemical imbalance, but it is thru “Mike’s” actions & inaction (his conduct, his behavior) only that he has been so diagnosed. Mr. Earley declines to see any contradiction here; he declines to inquire, “Which chemical imbalance in my son produces these behavioral symptoms?” Instead, he leaves Virginia to investigate the mental health system in Florida.
In writing of his own experience with the obsession to medicalize conduct, humorist Mort Sahl wrote to the effect that if you state your own case, it’s paranoia; if [someone of community standing] states it for you, it’s social justice. Ergo, Mr. Earley.
Rating: 2 / 5
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:30 am
As I was watching the news which covered the Virginia Tech shooting, an author was given a slot to offer his opinion, and his name was Peter Earley. Bottom of the screen was his book titled Crazy. So, I wrote it down and checked out the book from the library. As true to my word, I read the book and finished it in a few days. I thought Crazy was very subjective and prejudicially written because he almost turns the book into a one-sided affair, pushing me to side with him in his beliefs. This is attributed to one fact only: his son’s mental illness. Of course, if it weren’t for his son, this book wouldn’t have happened, and he would be active in his job reporting for the Washington Post while slumming in the posh section of Northern Virginia. His method of reporting is to interview people associated with this type of illness and go to places where the illness is prevalent. Okay, he just went to Miami, Florida and compiled all the information. Then, he gets to put them all in the book while getting bits of the other side of the coin: lawyers, advocates for the mental ill’s rights, and those who just don’t want to be associated with this subversive group of society. So, locking them up or placing them somewhere far away is the answer, as they say, if they refuse to take drugs. The book echoes all of the same stuff throughout the book, and it runs in circles until it reaches Pathway center. Pathway gives this heavenly idea of treatment, and the author just accepted that right away near the end of the book. Then he successfully concludes the book by simply saying that Pathway is the answer.
Okay, okay, okay….
Very amateurish work.
Now, did he go to other cities?
Maybe it is the same. But…
Did he do any investigative work outside of America? Did he go to Europe? Did he go to Australia? This is for purely comparative purposes. There is not a single mention of outside sources of information. He centralized his focus on Miami and the state of Florida to be the number one source of analysis of the mentally ill and its dilemma.
Wonderful job, but that sounds like adding itself to pile of books already done, studying that phenomena, only this time being extremely circular and closed-minded, not to mention very biased point-of-view and unsupported by any kind of research.
Honestly, my opinion of the mentally ill is that they have to be taken out of society if they place others in harm’s way. I advocate treatment for them, but face facts…the Americans don’t care about them, and the politicians are interested in fake problems.
Yes, his son deserves the felony charges, and life isn’t fair. Earley should know that already. All in all, I’ll read something else that touches mental illness but this time with more objective point of view backed with research.
Rating: 1 / 5
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:35 am
What does my daughter have in common with Mike Earley [son of author Pete Earley], Seung-hui Cho [Virginia Tech gunman], Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold [Columbine gunmen]? They were born in the 1980s when required vaccinations for millions of USA children were tripled and laced with mercury and formaldehyde. I can only speak for my daughter. These poisons and years of prescribed drugs had devastating consequences on my child’s health and mental stability. By the time she turned 20, she had major chemical imbalances resulting in constant health challenges. She could not hold a job and had all the signs of schizophrenia. The good news: during the summer of 2006, she started taking massive amounts glyconutrients [the 8 vital sugars]. With these glycos, her body had the potent nutrition it needed to repair itself. Within a few months, most of her years of health challenges simply disappeared and she became so……normal! But, what about the millions of young people in crisis for the same reason, whose families don’t know where to turn? Are these kids really `crazy’, or could it be their body is starved for the potent nutrition found in the 8 glycos? Spread the word; there IS hope! [Pete Earley was interviewed on NPR this morning. I'm intensely interested in the subject and will read his book when it arrives.]
Rating: 5 / 5