Nowhere to Go: The Tragic Odyssey of the Homeless Mentally Ill - Hardcover

Millions of homeless people roam the streets of America, and the consensus is that one-third of them suffer severe mental disturbance. Torrey ( Surviving Schizophrenia ) is well qualified to diagnose this national tragedy: he worked at the National Institute of Mental Health for five years and runs a psychiatric clinic for homeless women. In a powerful, stinging expose, he spares no onepsychiatrists who shun the severely mentally ill and opt instead for lucrative private practice; civil-liberties lawyers who force the release of patients; an indifferent Reagan administration that hastened "deinstitutionalization" of patients; state hospital officials, bypassed for federal funding, who left the problem of aftercare to community mental-health centersall players in the system receive a sound drubbing. Torrey calls his former employer, the NIMH, a jungle of ineffectual programs. He urges a combination of greater public psychiatric services, subsidized low-income housing and the requirement that every psychiatrist work four hours per month with the homeless mentally ill. No other book has dealt with this crisis so thoroughly.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The title is deceiving because it implies that this work is about the daily plight of the homeless mentally ill. Instead, the book centers on the reason for their plight, arguing that the closing of mental hospitals, the exodus of mental health workers into private practice, and the failure of the community mental health centers have forced many severely ill mental patients out on the streets. Though the book effectively demonstrates how the mental health establishment in the United States has failed to provide adequate care for severely ill patients, it assumes that the majority of the homeless are mentally ill without presenting evidence that this is the case. For college and research libraries. Kim Banks, Columbia Univ. Libs., New York
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.