A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley 1. What do you suppose the author is referring to by using the word “crazy” in the title of the book?

A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by
Pete Earley
1. What do you suppose the author is referring to by using the word “crazy” in the title of the book?

2. Are the chronically mentally ill any better off since the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill?
Why or why not? Please be specific and use specific examples from the book.
3. How does a person with a chronic mental illness affect the family? What are the fears of families?
4. Name some “system problems” that are discussed in the book.
5. Have we gone too far to protect “civil rights”? Are we hurting the chronically mentally ill by giving
them these “rights”?
6. What is “imminent danger” in reference to the mentally ill and what are the risks of waiting until
one does display this level of “danger”?
7. Have we “freed” the chronically mentally ill? Abandoned them? Imprisoned them?
8. What was the intended effect of “the right to refuse treatment”?
9. In the book, it talks about “Passageways” treatment center who treat what we call the “mad and
the bad” but why are they the successful?
10. Discuss some of the symptoms of mental illness that are described in the book. Be specific.
11. Why does the staff really fear “the 9 th floor”?
12. Did this book do anything to change your perception of the mentally ill or the treatment of the
mentally ill? What are your feelings after reading this book? Your personal opinion?