Madness in the streets

Examines the cultural and political issues surrounding the problem of America's homeless mentally ill

Taking aim at advocacy groups who view the homeless as ordinary people down on their luck, the authors of this scorching critique cite findings that 30% to 40% of the homeless suffer from major mental illness, and that a high proportion are substance abusers. Isaac, a sociologist, and freelance journalist Armat, blame the abandonment of the homeless mentally ill on the anti-psychiatry movement (led by Thomas Szasz, Ronald Laing, among others), on civil libertarians and on psychiatrists who foster the "delusion that preventive community psychiatry could eliminate mental illness." Arguing that we have replaced the mental hospital with the 18th-century poorhouse which threw together the mentally ill, the retarded, criminals and the displaced, they warn that a humane system of care will be costly and might involve treatment of some mentally ill persons against their will. Their support for judicious use of electroshock therapy will also stir controversy.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Isaac and Armat, a sociologist and a journalist, respectively, look retrospectively at the causes behind the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the 1970s--a phenomena they abhor. Their solution to this monstrous error is to combine community services with active psychiatric treatment. Chapters expose how the "madness myth" started with anti-psychiatry proponents R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, ex-patient groups, and radical psychiatrists like Jeffrey Masson. The authors also lambast lawyers who eliminated involuntary commitment and sued hospitals and doctors for failure to treat. But perhaps the most riveting portion of this well-researched, disturbing, and lucid expository is the devastation wreaked on families by untreated relatives afflicted with mental illness. A good companion to Ann Braden Johnson's Out of Bedlam ( LJ 9/1/90). Recommended for larger collections.
- Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.