Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness

Many of the stories Earley investigates are influenced by, or are the result of, deinstitutionalization movements decades earlier. Deinstitutionalization began in the 1960s; over the following decades, mentally ill and developmentally disabled adults were released from institutions without proper support systems, resulting in homelessness and incarceration. Rather than getting rid of asylums and psychiatric state hospitals entirely, Earley views this movement as merely shifting where the mentally ill can be put away: “our jails and prisons have become our nation’s asylums because there is nowhere else for the mentally ill to go” (354). In other words, no one wants the mentally ill to be treated poorly, but they also want them out of sight and out of mind.

Rather than providing support, therapy, services, and skills, the conditions in prison often exacerbate symptoms for the mentally ill, making it more difficult for them to succeed when they are released. Many of the inadequate and severe laws surrounding medicating the mentally ill have their foundation in deinstitutionalization. Earley does not demonize all of deinstitutionalization, but he sees it as merely shifting the mentally ill from one less than ideal place to another. Earley uses the story of DeeDee Sanbourne to reveal the dangers of deinstitutionalization without adequate community mental health services.