American Madness

Alice Feller, MD is a writer and a clinical psychiatrist. She has worked in private practice, hospital emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, chemical dependency programs and public clinics in East Oakland and beyond. Her writing, focused on mental health, addiction and homelessness, has appeared in the East Bay Express, the Laney Tower, CalMatters, fort da and Interconnecting Circles, as well as the opinion pages of the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. She has served two terms on the City of Berkeley Homeless Commission and is an analyst member of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She lives with her husband and daughter in Berkeley, California.

• IntroductionChapter 1: Beginnings A Family Affair Western Psych Chapter 2: Community Mental HealthPsych Emergency Ward 2N Chapter 3: The System Crashes Eating From Garbage Cans: Robbie Highland Hospital Sidewalks and Jails Replace Hospitals On the Left: Szasz, Kesey and Revolutionary Zeal People Wrongly HospitalizedChapter 4: Economic Causes of Homelessness Panhandling For a Living: Kyle Loss of our Industrial BaseDeaths of Despair and the Opioid CrisisUnemployment Figures Are UnaffectedHousing Vanishes and the Safety Net UnravelsHoping for ShelterChapter 5: Chemical Dependency A Personal Foray Into Addiction Heroin in the Haight Soldiers Battle at Home Struggle and Recovery: Kaiser Oakland The Dynamics of Addiction Cannabis and Human Health Chapter 6: Treating Psychosis in Private Practice The Woman Who Threatened to Kill Kids Ten Thousand Hours of ListeningA Psychodynamic Approach to the Treatment of Psychosis: Chris Psychosis after Trauma: Maureen Chaos in a Failed Treatment: Julian Chapter 7: Everything Stops The School of Second Chances Chapter 8: Service Center in Oakland, 2017–2021 Orientation: SophieLove and VerminSmoke and Longing: BrandonA Thousand MasksChapter 9: Effects of RacismPolice Violence and Mass IncarcerationAJ’s StoryHousing and Health InequitiesTurned Away: LucilleChapter 10: Board and Care HomesAerospace ShipsA Lightening Visit with Jamal to See Marvin Psychosis and HomicideTattoos and Teaspoons: GracieChapter 11: The Crucial Role of FamiliesListen to the FamiliesTwo HousesFound and Lost: AmariMela ShalimarA Motherless SoldierLeaving Dry Valley: George and LutherChapter 12: Living Unsheltered in the 21st CenturyFull–Service PartnershipSleeping Rough“Homeless by Choice”A Fatal Overdose: PatrickChapter 13: Our Broken System Early Intervention in Schizophrenia Lack of Hospital BedsSAMHSAMental Health Professionals Often Unfamiliar with Severe Mental Illness Collaboration and Sense of a Common Mission Information and Misinformation: EMRs Transparency and Accountability HIPAA Fragmented System: Nonprofits and the Millionaires Tax The Question of Hospital Treatment Epilogue: Suggestions for Change ReferencesIndexAbout the Author

Alice Feller’s American Madness is a personal memoir of her experience spanning almost 50 years of psychiatric practice. This is an important book that documents the collapse of effective mental health care in America, which has led to inadequate treatment for a large part of the American population. The mental health system has become an ineffective treatment provider of the severely ill, the substance dependent, the poor, and racial minorities. This book is the work of a fine writer whose stories, while desperately sad, are written artfully in a way that reminds me of William Carlos Williams in his Doctor Stories and John Berger in A Fortunate Man. This book is a must-read for all those who care about the repair of an insane system for treating the mentally ill.