American Psychosis by M. D. Torrey Executive Director E Fuller
Tags: General, Medical, History, Psychology, Health & Fitness, Diseases, Nervous System (Incl. Brain), Psychiatry, Public Health, Clinical Psychology
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the generous donation of many people’s time. Special thanks go to Bertram S. Brown, who unhesitatingly shared his ideas and memories for a book that he knew would not be flattering, and to Henry Foley, who retrieved his valuable 1972 interview tapes from his garage shelf and generously shared them. Others who kindly responded to my inquiries include Robert Atwell, Jerry Dincin, Matthew Dumont, Sister Ann Dyer, Rashi Fein, Mary Herbert, Robert Keisling, Anthony Lehman, Bentson McFarland, Frank Ochberg, Lucy Ozarin, Anthony Panzetta, Roger Peele, Steven Sharfstein, Alan Stone, John Talbott, and Claudwell Thomas. Archivists and librarians are a writer’s best friends and I am specifically indebted to Tracy Holt at NIMH; Doug Atkins at the National Library of Medicine; Gary McMillan at the American Psychiatric Association; Amy Lutzke at the Fort Atkinson Public Library; and Eric Robinson at the New York Historical Society.
Faith Dickerson, Doris Fuller, Jeffrey Geller, Stephen Hersh, D. J. Jaffe, and Robert Taylor read portions of the text and contributed valuable comments. My best reader, as always, was Barbara Torrey, who contributed not only suggestions but everything else that makes writing a book possible. Sarah Harrington and Andrea Zekus at Oxford University Press made the revisions and publication of this book hassle-free, and it has been a great pleasure to work with them. Melissa Bolla is an excellent research assistant, and Judy Miller provided invaluable editorial and administrative assistance once again.
In addition to the above, I gratefully acknowledge the following:
• Chloe Raub, Special Collections Research Center, George Washington University, for permission to use the picture of Dr. Walter Freeman
• Michael Gorman, for permission to use the picture of his father
• Keith Ablow, MD, for permission to quote him from Fox News
• The San Francisco Chronicle , for permission to quote from “Homeless by the Bay”
• The American Psychiatric Association, for permission to quote from the American Journal of Psychiatry and Hospital and Community Psychiatry
• Mental Health America, for permission to quote from Mental Hygiene
American Psychosis
8
SOLUTIONS: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED AND WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
For more than a century, the care of individuals with serious mental illnesses had been the responsibility of state governments. The transfer of this responsibility from states to the federal government began during 1962, with the deliberations of President Kennedy’s Interagency Task Force on Mental Health; this group planned the new, federally funded community mental health centers. Half a century has now passed since those meetings took place—what would members of the task force think of their plans in retrospect?
Boisfeuillet Jones, the lawyer who was the task force chairman, and Robert Manley, the Veterans Administration representative, both died without apparently publicly expressing an opinion regarding the task force’s work. Daniel Moynihan is now also deceased but in 1994 expressed clear reservations about what they had done. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Moynihan convened hearings on “Deinstitutionalization, Mental Illness and Medication.” In his opening statement, he criticized the failure to follow up patients after discharge from the state hospitals: “It was soon clear enough that in order for this [deinstitutionalization] to work you could not just discharge persons, they had to be looked after.” The result, he said, had been a sharp increase in the number of homeless people. “To make great changes casually and not pay rigorous attention to what follows,” he added, “is to invite large disturbances.” 1
Both economist members of the Interagency Task Force—Robert Atwell and Rashi Fein—are alive. Atwell later served as president of Pitzer College and president of the American Council on
This book would not have been possible without the generous donation of many people’s time. Special thanks go to Bertram S. Brown, who unhesitatingly shared his ideas and memories for a book that he knew would not be flattering, and to Henry Foley, who retrieved his valuable 1972 interview tapes from his garage shelf and generously shared them. Others who kindly responded to my inquiries include Robert Atwell, Jerry Dincin, Matthew Dumont, Sister Ann Dyer, Rashi Fein, Mary Herbert, Robert Keisling, Anthony Lehman, Bentson McFarland, Frank Ochberg, Lucy Ozarin, Anthony Panzetta, Roger Peele, Steven Sharfstein, Alan Stone, John Talbott, and Claudwell Thomas. Archivists and librarians are a writer’s best friends and I am specifically indebted to Tracy Holt at NIMH; Doug Atkins at the National Library of Medicine; Gary McMillan at the American Psychiatric Association; Amy Lutzke at the Fort Atkinson Public Library; and Eric Robinson at the New York Historical Society.
Faith Dickerson, Doris Fuller, Jeffrey Geller, Stephen Hersh, D. J. Jaffe, and Robert Taylor read portions of the text and contributed valuable comments. My best reader, as always, was Barbara Torrey, who contributed not only suggestions but everything else that makes writing a book possible. Sarah Harrington and Andrea Zekus at Oxford University Press made the revisions and publication of this book hassle-free, and it has been a great pleasure to work with them. Melissa Bolla is an excellent research assistant, and Judy Miller provided invaluable editorial and administrative assistance once again.
In addition to the above, I gratefully acknowledge the following:
• Chloe Raub, Special Collections Research Center, George Washington University, for permission to use the picture of Dr. Walter Freeman
• Michael Gorman, for permission to use the picture of his father
• Keith Ablow, MD, for permission to quote him from Fox News
• The San Francisco Chronicle , for permission to quote from “Homeless by the Bay”
• The American Psychiatric Association, for permission to quote from the American Journal of Psychiatry and Hospital and Community Psychiatry
• Mental Health America, for permission to quote from Mental Hygiene
American Psychosis
8
SOLUTIONS: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED AND WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
For more than a century, the care of individuals with serious mental illnesses had been the responsibility of state governments. The transfer of this responsibility from states to the federal government began during 1962, with the deliberations of President Kennedy’s Interagency Task Force on Mental Health; this group planned the new, federally funded community mental health centers. Half a century has now passed since those meetings took place—what would members of the task force think of their plans in retrospect?
Boisfeuillet Jones, the lawyer who was the task force chairman, and Robert Manley, the Veterans Administration representative, both died without apparently publicly expressing an opinion regarding the task force’s work. Daniel Moynihan is now also deceased but in 1994 expressed clear reservations about what they had done. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Moynihan convened hearings on “Deinstitutionalization, Mental Illness and Medication.” In his opening statement, he criticized the failure to follow up patients after discharge from the state hospitals: “It was soon clear enough that in order for this [deinstitutionalization] to work you could not just discharge persons, they had to be looked after.” The result, he said, had been a sharp increase in the number of homeless people. “To make great changes casually and not pay rigorous attention to what follows,” he added, “is to invite large disturbances.” 1
Both economist members of the Interagency Task Force—Robert Atwell and Rashi Fein—are alive. Atwell later served as president of Pitzer College and president of the American Council on
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