Product Description

"Powerful. . . . The crisis [Torrey] delineates should stir any halfway sensitive human being to anger."--The New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant and remarkably detailed. . . . Dr. Torrey, our clearest and most informed voice for the mentally ill, offers his own insightful plan for a way out . . . of a healthcare scandal that remains one of America's most enduring shames."--Phil Donahue.

"If President Clinton is looking for a worthy goal to accomplish in his second term, here's one: Rescue the homeless mentally ill. It can be done. . . . Dr. E. Fuller Torrey . . . provides a five-year road map in Out of the Shadows."--New York Daily News.

"An important book . . . timely and very well written."--The New England Journal of Medicine.

"Controversial ideas, forcefully presented."--Kirkus Reviews

"Moving and vivid. . . . Torrey's powerful prescription for change challenges conventional wisdom and political correctness. His searing case examples will haunt the reader."--Laurie Flynn Executive Director National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #426808 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-12
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .69" h x 6.32" w x 9.24" l, .96 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Amazon.com
E. Fuller Torrey excoriates the way the mentally ill are treated in this country. His polemic against the concept of "deinstitutionalization" takes us on a grim tour of the lives led by the mentally ill: untreated, homeless, jobless, and helpless against street violence. Torrey argues that the criteria for involuntary commitment should include the need for treatment.

From Kirkus Reviews
The crisis, simply put, is that 2.2 million of the estimated 5.6 million Americans with serious mental illness are not being treated. Instead, these ``walking time bombs'' are often homeless in the community or incarcerated in prisons. Torrey, a clinical research psychiatrist, explores how this situation came to be and offers some radical proposals for remedying it. Torrey (Nowhere To Go, 1988; Freudian Fraud, 1992, etc.) notes that for the majority of people with severe mental disorders treatments to effectively control their symptoms are already available, and with research, better ones would surely be found. To that end, he urges formation of a National Brain Research Institute. Meanwhile, however, Torrey sees much that can be done to provide humane and cost-effective services for the severely mentally ill. With numerous anecdotes and impressive statistics, he builds a dismaying picture of society's failure to care for the mentally ill. He then argues for major ideological, economic, and legal changes, as well as a change in how we think about serious mental illnesses. Too often they are seen as occupying one end of the spectrum of mental health, linked to social reform and liberal causes and thus highly politicized. Torrey asserts that when serious mental illnesses are properly viewed as neurological disorders of the brain, research funding, treatment resources, and professional expertise can be more readily obtained. To eliminate cost-shifting between levels of government, which he sees as the primary cause of the present situation, he would make the states responsible for providing services and accountable for treatment outcomes, with the federal government providing block grants. While these proposals may arouse polite debate, the legal remedies he calls for- -changing the laws to permit involuntary treatment, including involuntary commitment to hospitals--raise some very troubling images and are likely to elicit loud objections. Controversial ideas, forcefully presented. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Publisher
This book is concerned with the social implications of the deinstitutionalization of people with serious and dangerous mental illness. Author E. Fuller Torrey draws on nearly forty years of clinical and research experience to explore solutions to America's mental illness problems and the reasons these solutions are not pursued. He separates "mental illness" (schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, and other brain-based disorders) from "mental health" (the "worried well," and people suffering from quality-of-life and emotional problems). This compassionate study provides a complete analysis of how the mental health system has failed and the far-reaching repercussions of this failure, such as homelessness, violence in the community, and the strain on families of the mentally ill. Controversial and compelling, this book offers a unique perspective on the current state of managing the mentally ill and a plan for the future.