2015 11 17 Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley

Sponsored by DBSA San Diego

Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Room 2011 (Second Floor)

VA San Diego Medical Center

3350 La Jolla Village Drive

San Diego, California 92161

Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley will be our book for discussion.

From Publishers Weekly

Suffering delusions from bipolar disorder, Mike Earley broke into a stranger's home to take a bubble bath and significantly damaged the premises. That Mike's act was viewed as a crime rather than a psychotic episode spurred his father, veteran journalist Pete Earley (Family of Spies), to investigate the "criminalization of the mentally ill." Earley gains access to the Miami-Dade County jail where guards admit that they routinely beat prisoners. He learns that Deidra Sanbourne, whose 1988 deinstitutionalization was a landmark civil rights case, died after being neglected in a boarding house. A public defender describes how he—not always happily—helps mentally ill clients avoid hospitalization. Throughout this grim work, Earley uneasily straddles the line between father and journalist. He compromises his objectivity when for most of his son's ordeal—Mike gets probation—he refuses to entertain the possibility that the terrified woman whose home Mike trashed also is a victim. And when, torn between opposing obligations, he decides not to reveal to a source's mother that her daughter has gone off her medications, he endangers the daughter's life and betrays her mother. Although this is mostly a sprawling retread of more significant work by psychologist Fuller Torrey and others, parents of the mentally ill should find solace and food for thought in its pages. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

[A] clarion call for change and justice, and an enthralling portrait of a father who refused to surrender. (Bebe Moore Campbell)

Takes readers on a harrowing personal journey... (Senator Pete V. Domenici [R-N.M.] and Nancy Domenici)

About the Author

Pete Earley, a former reporter for The Washington Post, is the author of seven works of nonfiction, including the bestsellers The Hot House and Family of Spies, and the multi-award-winning Circumstantial Evidence. According to the Washingtonian magazine, he is one of ten journalist/authors in America "who have the power to introduce new ideas and give them currency." Earley is also the author of two novels.

LINKS:
San Diego Public Library
San Diego County Library

Directions: Take Interstate 5 to the La Jolla Village Drive exit. Drive west (on La Jolla Village Drive) and turn right at the first stoplight, onto Villa La Jolla Drive. Go up the hill and turn right at the first stoplight, then make the next right turn into the lot just south of the VA San Diego Medical Center and park there (for free). Enter the front of the building, continue walking straight, to the elevators, go to the Second Floor, and proceed to Room 2011, which is close to the elevators.