Mennonite Weekly Review

The contradictory realities of caring for the mentally ill and putting them in jail have become tragically intertwined in America. A half century after Mennonites helped introduce sweeping changes in mental hospitals, a need for similar reform in mental health care now has come to light in the nation’s prisons and in other places where bureaucracy has been allowed to trump compassion in the care of the emotionally disturbed.

This tragic situation is the subject of journalist Pete Earley’s recent book Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness. The book details the fearsome travails endured by Earley’s adult son, Mike, who has bipolar disorder, a common and fully treatable condition often known as manic-depression because of its steep, pendulum-like swings in mood and mental stability.

In a situation experienced by many in his condition, Mike Earley found himself pulled headlong from the relative safety of receiving care for his illness to full immersion in the criminal justice system after he broke into a neighbor’s home during a severe episode of mania. Pete Earley’s book presents a stark and startling portrayal of the maze-like path that often lies before the mentally ill. This path can lead to jail and even worse illness as often as to liberation from the mysterious malfunctions of the brain that disable so many otherwise productive and creative people.

At the heart of Crazy — the title refers to the state of the mental health care system and not to the condition of those who suffer from disorders such as manic-depression — is a survey of the fundamental misunderstandings that most people have about mental illness. These misunderstandings, in turn, have led to some disturbing trends in the care offered to those with mental disorders.

“Mental illnesses are chemical imbalances that affect how nerve cells in the brain send and receive messages,” Earley wrote in a recent editorial in USA Today. “They can strike anyone. Nothing in our family’s history hinted that a debilitating disorder loomed ahead. And Mike did nothing to bring this sickness on himself. Sadly, we are making jails a core part of our mental health care network. Jail officials are building separate facilities for psychotic prisoners. In effect, we are reconstructing the dreaded ‘warehouse’ asylums from our past inside our jails.”

That last sentence alone should compel many Mennonites to read Crazy. Following World War II, when Anabaptist conscientious objectors worked in mental hospitals and were appalled by these “warehouse” conditions, a revolution in mental health care occurred. This was led in some places by Mennonites who felt called to action not only as health providers but as a people of faith. They could not stand by while the helpless and ill were treated like little more than zoo animals, confined to horrendous asylums where their humanity was destroyed by neglect and abuse.

Today an equally urgent emergency in the mental health care field looms again in the nation’s jails. Perhaps yet another call to action can be heard in this declaration, also from Earley’s editorial: “Jails are not safe places for a person with a mental illness, and the sick shouldn’t have to become criminals to get help.”

If a new generation of Anabaptist health activists could use a fresh challenge — one related to faith as much as medicine — this would be it.