Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, by Thomas Insel (Penguin, 336 pages, $28)
Shortly after World War II, mental-health authorities made a promise that went something like this: Everything’s going to get better. We’ve decided that confining mentally ill Americans to asylums is unnecessary and harmful. They will be transferred to a place known as “the community.” There, we plan to develop a new array of programs superior to the discredited asylum system. The mentally ill will live normal lives in the community, thanks to supports — social, employment, recreational, housing — and access to treatment, whose efficacy is, by the way, rapidly improving. Mental health used to be “the shame of the states,” but that day is passing.
Comments