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A review by socraticgadfly
The Insanity Offense: How America's Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens by E. Fuller Torrey
5.0
A welcome corrective to overly libertarian public policy toward the mentally ill
Picture a small county in Texas, 25,000 population, with only one special confinement cell and no specially trained sheriff's deputies.
Picture a severely bipolar young man, with other mental health diagnoses as well, such as PTSD, on parole from a manslaughter convictioon (he may or may not have committed) assaulting his mother and stepfather.
Picture him now locked away here, literally trying to bash his head against the walls. Add to the fact that the PTSD was prison induced, in part through prison rape, just as Dr. Torrey describes.
Picture a relatively sympathetic DA, and very sympathetic sheriff, hands tied do to lack of resources.
I don't have to "picture" it. I've reported on it.
What Dr. Fuller Torrey says is all so true.
Add in the Texas mental health system, which is one of the worst in the nation, as Torrey notes. A system lacking mental health beds in both the "outside" world and inside the criminal justice system.
We CAN do better, without going back to stereotyped days of the 1950s. We don't need hyper-civil libertarians (I am a card-carrying ACLU member myself), or Scientologists, telling us mental illness doesn't exist, or the severely mentally ill have freedom of choice when they don't even know who they are.
Somehow, some way, we must change our laws.
Picture a small county in Texas, 25,000 population, with only one special confinement cell and no specially trained sheriff's deputies.
Picture a severely bipolar young man, with other mental health diagnoses as well, such as PTSD, on parole from a manslaughter convictioon (he may or may not have committed) assaulting his mother and stepfather.
Picture him now locked away here, literally trying to bash his head against the walls. Add to the fact that the PTSD was prison induced, in part through prison rape, just as Dr. Torrey describes.
Picture a relatively sympathetic DA, and very sympathetic sheriff, hands tied do to lack of resources.
I don't have to "picture" it. I've reported on it.
What Dr. Fuller Torrey says is all so true.
Add in the Texas mental health system, which is one of the worst in the nation, as Torrey notes. A system lacking mental health beds in both the "outside" world and inside the criminal justice system.
We CAN do better, without going back to stereotyped days of the 1950s. We don't need hyper-civil libertarians (I am a card-carrying ACLU member myself), or Scientologists, telling us mental illness doesn't exist, or the severely mentally ill have freedom of choice when they don't even know who they are.
Somehow, some way, we must change our laws.