Crazy in america

“A national scandal” is the phrase coined by Ms. Pfeiffer, an investigative reporter, that she uses to describe people with mental illness and their shockingly tragic encounters with the criminal justice system. In this heartbreaking book, she meticulously documents the stories of six people with mental illness who came into contact with the criminal justice system due to aberrant psychotic behaviors related to their illnesses and suffered tragic experiences in jails and prisons. This is the horrible story of how incarcerated human beings with mental illness are often subjected to dehumanizing experiences. It is a documentation of human beings in a system with “very little mental health care” and a system in which “people are expendable in a society that is good at locking people up but not so good at releasing them.”

This is the story of Shayne, who at age fourteen was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. From that point on, she experienced extreme coping difficulties and, over the years, she was hospitalized 25 times in addition to spending time in prison. Much of his time in prison was spent in “the hole” due to his inability to follow prison rules. She successfully pulled out one of her eyeballs; two years later he managed to remove the other eyeball, blinding himself completely.

This is also the story of Luke, diagnosed as bipolar and addicted to drugs at a young age. Depression was also part of his life. After being incarcerated for drug possession, Luke’s difficulty with coping skills intensified. He became more and more emotionally frantic until, woefully desperate, he died by suicide.

This is the story of José, who had stolen several cars and ended up in a juvenile correctional facility where he was unable to cope successfully. After spending two months confined in a small cell with no television, no family visits, no exercise, no personal possessions, no mental health services, the severely distraught Joseph became another tragic statistic when he died by suicide at the age of eighteen.

Crazy in America is an intense and emotionally draining description of the lost lives of people with mental illness within a system that failed them, a system that did not understand their illnesses and therefore did not treat them effectively. The individuals are just a few of the many that Ms. Pfeiffer could have portrayed. As the author states, “The mass of imprisoned humanity includes at least three hundred thousand people with mental illness.” This book adds to the growing list of books that address the growing societal problem of mental illness and incarceration.

The author is a strong advocate for change and has written numerous articles on incarcerated mentally ill people. She clarifies the meaning of the word crazy. She doesn’t use it to refer to people with mental illness; he uses it to describe what he says is the insane way society reacts towards individuals with mental illness. Ms. Pfeiffer appropriately and appropriately concludes her book by saying, “America must again try to cure their ills and help them heal themselves, with the wisdom of history and the knowledge that the people we will help, will help them. people we will heal, we will be ourselves. “

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