Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill

This well-researched and highly critical examination of the state of our mental health system by the industry's most relentless critic presents a new and controversial explanation as to why--in spite of spending $147 billion annually--140,000 seriously mentally ill are homeless, 390,000 are incarcerated, and even educated, tenacious, and caring people can't get treatment for their mentally ill loved ones. DJ Jaffe blames the mental health industry and the government for shunning the 10 million adults who are the most seriously mentally ill--mainly those who suffer from schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder--and, instead, working to improve "mental wellness" in 43 million others, many of whom are barely symptomatic. Using industry and government documents, scientific journals, and anecdotes from his thirty years of advocacy, Jaffe documents the insane consequences of these industry-driven policies: psychiatric hospitals for the seriously ill are still being closed; involuntary commitment criteria are being narrowed to the point where laws now require violence rather than prevent it; the public is endangered; and the mentally ill and their families are forced to suffer.Insane Consequences proposes smart, compassionate, affordable, and sweeping reforms designed to send the most seriously ill to the head of the line for services rather than to jails, shelters, prisons, and morgues. It lays out a road map to spend less on mental "health" and more on mental "illness"--replace mission creep with mission control and return the mental health system to a focus on the most seriously ill. It is not money that is lacking; it's leadership. This book is a must-read for anyone who works in the mental health industry or cares about the mentally ill, violence, homelessness, incarceration, or public policy.

• No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America
• Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness
• Breakdown: A Clinician's Experience in a Broken System of Emergency Psychiatry (serious mental illness, psychosis, reform)
• Surviving Schizophrenia, 7th Edition: A Family Manual
• American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
• Sooner Than Tomorrow: A Mother's Diary About Mental Illness, Family, and Everyday Life
• I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help! How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment. 10th Anniversary Edition.
• Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness
• No One Cares About Crazy People: My Family and the Heartbreak of Mental Illness in America
• The Insanity Offense: How America's Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens