Mental Health, Inc.

How Corruption, Lax Oversight and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens

Art Levine

• Publisher: Abrams Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781468308372
• eBook ISBN: 9781468315318
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Psychiatry & Mental Health

The mental health system in America is hardly the front-burner issue it should be, despite lip service about reform after each new tragic mass killing. Yet every American should care deeply about fixing a system a presidential commission reported was in "shambles." By some measures, 20 percent of Americans have some sort of mental health condition, including the most vulnerable among us—veterans, children, the elderly, prisoners, the homeless.With Mental Health, Inc., award-winning investigative journalist Art Levine delivers a Shock Doctrine-style exposé of the failures of our out of control, profit-driven mental health system, with a special emphasis on dangerous residential treatment facilities and the failures of the pharmaceutical industry, including the overdrugging of children with antipsychotics and the disastrous maltreatment of veterans with PTSD by the scandal-wracked VA.Levine provides compelling narrative portraits of victims who needlessly died and some mentally ill people who won unexpected victories in their lives by getting smart, personalized help from "pyschosocial" programs that incorporate safe and appropriate prescribing, along with therapy and social support. He contrasts their stories with corrupt Big Pharma executives and researchers who created fraudulent marketing schemes. Levine also tells the dramatic David vs. Goliath stories of a few brave reformers, including Harvard-trained psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, who has acted as a whistleblower in several major cases, leading to important federal and state settlements; in addition, the book spotlights pioneering clinicians challenging outmoded, drug-and-sedate practices that leave 90 percent of people with serious mental illness too disabled to work.By taking a comprehensive look at mental health abuses and dangerous, ineffective practices as well as pointing toward solutions for creating a system for effective, proven and compassionate care, Art Levine's essential Mental Health, Inc. is a call to action for politicians and citizens alike—needed now more than ever.

Table of contents

• COVER
• COPYRIGHT
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. Drugging Our Kids: Corporate Greed Joins Corruption, Apathy
• 2. Nursing Homes: Drugging Our Seniors to Death
• 3. The Secret History of the VA’s Tragedies in Tomah and Phoenix
• 4. The Secret History of the VA Scandals, Part II: The Empire Strikes Back
• 5. A Marine’s Descent into PTSD Hell
• 6. Stan White and the Veterans’ Search for Truth and Answers
• 7. Mr. White Comes to Washington: FDA Showdown over Seroquel
• 8. Drug-Free PTSD Recovery
• 9. How LA County’s Mental Health Officials Neglect Inmates and Ignore Violence
• 10. To Live and Die in LA: How DMH’s Outreach Work Saves Lives, Stops Mass Shootings
• 11. Torture in Alabama
• 12. Profits and Losses from Residential Treatment: The Story of Bain Capital and CRC Health
• 13. Recipe for Disaster?: Residential Treatment Programs for Addicts and Kids
• 14. Florida: Free-Fire Zone for Killing, Abusing and Raping Kids?
• 15. Karen’s Story and the Mental Health System That Never Was: Saving Families, Young People from Lifelong Madness
• 16. Why Can’t We Just Do What Works?
• 17. Putting People Before Big Pharma: Overcoming the Barriers to Recovery
• ENDNOTES
• ASSISTANCE, ADVOCACY AND INFORMATION RESOURCE GUIDE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR