Book Recommendations
How did we get here? Books to better understand the history of the American mental health system
Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill by D.J. Jaffe, 2017
American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System by E. Fuller Torrey, 2013
Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill by Rael Isaac and Virginia C. Arma, 2000
Nowhere to Go: The Tragic Odyssey of the Homeless Mentally Ill by E. Fuller Torrey, 1989
To better understand our system through the voices of those with lived experience
Bedlam: An Intimate Journey into America’s Mental Health Crisis by Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, 2019
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks, 2008
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison, 1997
Books by family members
He Came in With It: A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness by Miriam Feldman, 2021
No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America by Ron Powers, 2017
My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill by Clayton E. Cramer, 2012
Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley, 2007
Books about the intersection of mental illness and our criminal justice system
Decriminalizing Mental Illness, editors Katherine Warburton and Stephen Stahl, 2021
Insane: Inside America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness by Alisa Roth, 2018
Books specifically about the Trieste system of care
Freedom First: A Study of the Experiences with Community-Based Mental Healthcare in Trieste, Italy, and Its Significance for the Netherlands by Christien Muusse and Sonja van Rooijen, 2015
The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care by John Foot, 2015
Books that speak to community care and/or Radical Hospitality
Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons by Dr. Mary Watkins, 2019
Community Mental Health: A Practical Guide by Loren Mosher and Lorenzo Burti, 1989