num_pages: 384
description: Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it was only when his own son-in the throes of a manic episode-broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law. This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the "revolving doors" between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience-and into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way.
language: English
title: Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness
titlecomplete: Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness
genres: Sociology, Medical, Psychology, School, Memoir, Mental Illness, Health, Mental Health, Psychiatry, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 3701
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: General Nonfiction
publisher: Berkley