My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill - Paperback

by Clayton E. Cramer (Author)

America started a grand experiment in the 1960s: deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The consequences were very destructive: homelessness; a degradation of urban life; increases in violent crime rates; increasing death rates for the mentally ill. My Brother Ron tells the story of deinstitutionalization from two points of view: what happened to the author's older brother, part of the first generation of those who became mentally ill after deinstitutionalization, and a detailed history of how and why America went down this path. My Brother Ron examines the multiple strands that came together to create the perfect storm that was deinstitutionalization: a well-meaning concern about the poor conditions of many state mental hospitals; a giddy optimism by the psychiatric profession in the ability of new drugs to cure the mentally ill; a rigid ideological approach to due process that ignored that the beneficiaries would end up starving to death or dying of exposure.

Author Biography

Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer by day who teaches history at the College of Western Idaho at night. His work has been cited in U.S. Supreme Court decisions, as well as in dozens of decisions from federal appellate courts and state supreme courts. He lives in Idaho.