A review by hm_reads
No One Cares about Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America by Ron Powers

emotional informative sad medium-paced

1.75

The memoir portions of this book are really emotive and harrowing. The love is obvious. And the history of psychiatry and mental illness is well-researched. 

I do, however, struggle with the eventual moral of this story. Powers starts off from a really sympathetic place, proud of how far the science has come on invisible afflictions. There's a point where this plot gets lost amid what appears to be a (reasonably) personal frustration over involuntary commitment to treatment. There's a good critique underneath a really thick spread of a polemical campaign against the thinkers, processes, and cultural shifts the author seems to blame for his son's death. It confuses two potentials of this text: 

1. a text about empowerment and love for those who suffer from schizoaffective disorders 
2. a text that calls for the further securitization of mental health crisis

So while there's a critique of Reagan's specific approach for de-institutionalization, Powers never provides his view of most moral position, supposing that the reader will figure something out. It's not required that any author provide every solution, but when this is coupled with a disdain for the "anti-psychiatry movement" the insinuation is quite obvious. 

This book is extremely a product of its time, it has all the smarmy snark of so much of the nonfiction of the 2010s that overshadows what is a touching and sad story and (though at times mercenary) research into US mental health history and its influences.