Out Of Bedlam

A clinical social worker argues that the USA could not have designed a more insane system of mental health services for the chronically mentally ill if it had tried. The author draws on her experience with the severely mentally ill in a wide range of health settings.

A social worker for the chronically mentally ill (CMI) and now the mental health unit chief at Montefiore/Riker's Island, New York, the author here offers a clear, generally incisive, and provocative analysis of the rationale behind deinstitutionalization (mainstreaming mental patients into the community). She debunks several myths: that deinstitutionalization was planned; that it should cost less; and that medications like Thorazine are the cure-all. She also attacks the false assumptions that CMIs make up the bulk of the homeless, that they fill the prisons, and that we don't know what care they require. Lastly, she discusses the chasm between practitioners and bureaucrats, who turn "messy, unscientific social problems into neat, tidy empirical surveys. . . ." With statistics, case histories, and chapter notes all meant to shock, Johnson delivers a cogent and witty commentary supported by facts and a compassionate perspective.
- Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.