Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness

Earley speaks to Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist who testified before a congressional subcommittee in 1997 that people with mental illnesses were more likely to be unhoused due to the near-impossibility of involuntary psychiatric treatment in most states. He would go on to found a nonprofit advocacy group called the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) to challenge mental health legislation, as well as the Bazelon Center, which defended these laws.

Initially compelled by his sister’s schizophrenia diagnosis, Dr. Torrey would go on to believe that mental illnesses were diseases of the brain rather than merely products of childhood environment. His ideas were counter to the prevailing ideas put forward by the NIMH when he first began working there in 1970. He would later write Surviving Schizophrenia and many other important works on supporting people with mental illnesses.

Dr. Torrey’s TAC would also draft Kendra’s Law, which allowed medical providers to force a patient to take medication if they met six specific criteria. It was signed into law in 1999. Kendra’s Law was meant to be safer for the public and for the patient. Dr. Torrey tells Earley that the law wouldn’t force a patient like Mike to take medication but was aimed at those with a history of violence as well as hospitalizations.

On his next trip to Miami, Earley is invited to dinner with Judy Robinson and her son Jeff. Earley notes that Jeff, who is in his early fifties, does not appear to have a mental illness. Robinson and Jeff both tell the story of how his mental illness began to manifest when he was 12 years old. He was originally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and the illness was blamed on Robinson’s skills as a mother. The diagnosis was later changed to schizoaffective disorder. After Jeff had charges of attempted kidnapping brought against him and subsequently dismissed, he found medical treatment that helped.

Even with the progress he has made, Jeff tells Robinson and Earley that he is sure that he is being “watched and tested” by federal agents (232). Earley notes that Jeff’s outward demeanor shifts and that he appears to be more on edge. When Earley brings this up to Robinson and asks how she deals with her son’s mental illness, she becomes emotional, saying that for all her advocacy, she knows there is only so much she can do to help her son.