Nowhere to Go: The Tragic Odyssey of the Homeless Mentally Ill
Millions of homeless people roam the streets of America, and the consensus is that one-third of them suffer severe mental disturbance. Torrey ( Surviving Schizophrenia ) is well qualified to diagnose this national tragedy: he worked at the National Institute of Mental Health for five years and runs a psychiatric clinic for homeless women. In a powerful, stinging expose, he spares no onepsychiatrists who shun the severely mentally ill and opt instead for lucrative private practice; civil-liberties lawyers who force the release of patients; an indifferent Reagan administration that hastened "deinstitutionalization" of patients; state hospital officials, bypassed for federal funding, who left the problem of aftercare to community mental-health centersall players in the system receive a sound drubbing. Torrey calls his former employer, the NIMH, a jungle of ineffectual programs. He urges a combination of greater public psychiatric services, subsidized low-income housing and the requirement that every psychiatrist work four hours per month with the homeless mentally ill. No other book has dealt with this crisis so thoroughly.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.