Sometimes the journalist comes to the story; sometimes the story comes to the
journalist. This time the story came to Pete Earley, and it wasn’t pretty. “Crazy” is one
of the kinder words Earley could have used to describe what he found in his
investigation of the intersection of the mentally ill with the American criminal justice
system. Earley’s own discovery of the failed social system began for him the way it
began for many of us: when s family member’s psychosis made a seemingly inevitable
collision with the police.
The difference between Pete Earley and most of the rest of us is that he is a former
Washington Post reporter, who is able not only to articulate his own experience but to
observe, probe and report on the experience of others. Earley uses his head and heart
to collate into comprehensive form the facts and figures that show that his
experiences, and that of his son, were the norm, not deviations from it. The result of
Earley’s personal experience and his subsequent research is the kind of account which
I believe many more caring people need to comprehend if anything is ever to change
for the better in our social systems, or lack thereof, for dealing with mental illness. .
Earley’s book, Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,
consists of three separate but interwoven strands: the story of his son’s experience of
criminal justice for the mentally ill, accounts of mentally ill individuals in Miami whose
lives Earley documents, and research that reveals the systemic mistreatment of the
mentally ill, sadly done in the name of individual rights. Not to give away details better
told by Earley than me, this mistreatment includes mentally ill prisoners being kept
naked in practically refrigerated cells while awaiting trial. Other mentally ill prisoners
cycle through a Kafkaesque procedure in which after a court hearing they are sent to a
mental hospital to be made “competent to stand trial.” There they are usually
compelled to take medication to treat their illness, but then are returned to jail where
they are not, often held there long enough to decompensate so that they are no longer
“competent to stand trial.” So, back they go to the mental hospital. This circle of futility
may spin multiple times and last for months, even years.
Many of us may know the answer to the unfortunately popular (in the circles in which I
travel) trivia question: “What institution in the United States houses the most people
with mental illness?” (Answer: the Los Angeles County Jail.) That sounds bad, but what
many of us haven’t known is how bad jail conditions really are for those individuals who
happen to be afflicted with the particular diseases of the brain called mental illness.
Earley’s own story gives a sample of some of the personal anguish that family
members and loved ones experience, while the people whose lives he chronicles show
that his experience was neither unique nor extreme. Earley puts faces on the facts and
souls behind the statistics that are painful enough when they are anonymous. He
shows that the systematic mistreatment he documents is not at all the exception but
the rule — and what a sad set of rules they are.
Crazy is not a book for the faint of heart, and definitely not for those whose parents,
children, brothers or sisters are themselves mentally ill, and whose experiences have
left them currently in serious emotional pain. For those who can read it, they should.
While Earley’s accounts are graphic, I see no evidence that he exaggerates anything
that he has seen. Nevertheless, the reality he reports is as cold and hard as the cells
that some of those with mental illness occupy. While reading the book will be
particularly painful for anyone with a heart, and deeply distressing for anyone with
brain, it will be enlightening for anyone with eyes to see what an inhumane system we
have created, and allow to continue, “for” those with mental illness.
In the end, Crazy is a convincing plea that we change the way we deal with the
mentally ill who find themselves in our criminal justice system, for their sakes and for
ours as well.
Those who wish to work for a better, fairer and more humane mental health system in
North Carolina are invited to listen and talk to our legislators at the Annual Legislative
Breakfast for Mental Health, which will feature writer Lee Smith at the Friday Center
across from Meadowmont in Chapel Hill on Saturday, January 13, 2007 from 9:00 am –
11:30 am.
Gary D. Gaddy facilitates a local class as part of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’
Family-to-Family program, a 12-week course for the family members of individuals with
serious mental illness. If you have a family member with mental illness, go to
NAMI.ORG to learn more about this highly successful course.
A version of this column was published in the Chapel Hill Herald, January 11, 2007.
Copyright 2007 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 