Download or read book Insane written by Alisa Roth and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An urgent exposéf the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisons America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. As many as half of all people in America's jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with such disorders. In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker. Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look. Insane is a galvanizing wake-up call for criminal justice reformers and anyone concerned about the plight of our most vulnerable.

Download or read book Behind the Gates of Gomorrah written by Stephen Seager and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2015-01-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychiatrist Stephen Seager was no stranger to locked psych wards when he accepted a job at California's Gorman State hospital, known locally as 'Gomorrah', but nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered when he stepped through its gates, a triple sally port behind the twenty-foot walls topped with shining coils of razor wire. Gorman State is one of the nation's largest forensic mental hospitals, dedicated to treating the criminally insane. Unit C, where Seager was assigned, was reserved for the 'bad actors', the mass murderers, serial killers, and the real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world. Against a backdrop of surreal beauty - a campus-like setting where peacocks strolled the well-kept lawns - is a place of remarkable violence, a place where a small staff of clinicians are expected to manage a volatile population of prison-hardened ex-cons, where lone therapists lead sharing circles with psychopaths, where homemade weapons and contraband circulate freely, and where patients and physicians often measure their lives according to how fast they can run. Behind the Gates of Gomorrah affords an eye-opening look inside a facility to which few people have ever had access. Honest, reflective, and at times darkly funny, Seager's gripping account of his experiences at Gorman State hospital give us an extraordinary insight into a unique and terrifying world, inhabited by figures from our nightmares.

Download or read book Couple Found Slain written by Mikita Brottman and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Mikita Brottman is one of today’s finest practitioners of nonfiction.” —The New York Times Book Review Critically acclaimed author and psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman offers literary true crime writing at its best, taking us into the life of a murderer after his conviction—when most stories end but the defendant's life goes on. On February 21, 1992, 22-year-old Brian Bechtold walked into a police station in Port St. Joe, Florida and confessed that he’d shot and killed his parents in their family home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He said he’d been possessed by the devil. He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and ruled “not criminally responsible” for the murders on grounds of insanity. But after the trial, where do the "criminally insane" go? Brottman reveals Brian's inner life leading up to the murder, as well as his complicated afterlife in a maximum security psychiatric hospital, where he is neither imprisoned nor free. During his 27 years at the hospital, Brian has tried to escape and been shot by police, and has witnessed three patient-on-patient murders. He’s experienced the drugging of patients beyond recognition, a sadistic system of rewards and punishments, and the short-lived reign of a crazed psychiatrist-turned-stalker. In the tradition of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Couple Found Slain is an insider’s account of life in the underworld of forensic psych wards in America and the forgotten lives of those held there, often indefinitely.

Download or read book Psychos written by John Skipp and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 970 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of thirty-eight terrifying tales of serial killers at large, written by the great masters of the genre, plumbs the horrifying depths of a deranged mind and the forces of evil that compel a human being to murder, gruesomely and methodically, over and over again. From Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs) to Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), stories of serial killers and psychos loom large and menacing in our collective psyche. Tales of their grisly conquests have kept us cowering under the covers, but still turning the pages. Psychos is the first book to collect in a single volume the scariest and most well-crafted fictional works about these deranged killers. Some of the stories are classics, the best that the genre has to offer, by renowned writers such as Neil Gaiman, Amelia Beamer, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Harris. Other selections are from the latest and most promising crop of new authors. John Skipp, who is also the editor of Zombies, Demons and Werewolves and Shapeshifters, provides fascinating insight, through two nonfiction essays, into our insatiable obsession with serial killers and how these madmen are portrayed in popular culture. Resources at the end of the book includes lists of the genre's best long-form fiction, movies, websites, and writers.

Download or read book Ravencroft written by Frank Tieri and published by Marvel Entertainment. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects Ravencroft (2020) #1-5. Ravencroft’s history has been shrouded in mystery for years — but no longer! In the wake of ABSOLUTE CARNAGE, the past of the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane has started to unravel — revealing hidden chapters in the lives of some of the Marvel Universe’s most recognizable heroes and villains! Efforts to reconstruct Ravencroft are well underway, but the ruins of its history are there to be explored — by Misty Knight, John Jameson, Mister Fantastic…and Mayor Wilson Fisk, the onetime Kingpin of Crime! Prepare to learn how the Institute cast its dark shadow over the villains called Carnage and Sabretooth — not to mention the lord of the undead, Dracula himself! But what does Ravencroft’s hidden history have to do with a sinister scientist named Nathaniel Essex?

Download or read book The Criminally Insane written by Terence Thornberry and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1979-04 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Criminally Insane is the largest scale in-depth follow-up study on mentally ill criminals yet to appear. This book challenges the assumption that inmates of maximum-security mental hospitals are extraordinarily violent and questions the necessity for maintaining maximum-security institutions which currently house some 15,000 persons in the United States. In 1971, 586 patients were released from a Pennsylvania maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. They were not considered officially "cured," but a federal court held that their commitments had been unconstitutional. Through exhaustive examination of hospital and police records and interviews with hospital administrators and the subjects themselves, Thornberry and Jacoby assess the processes by which the patients had been retained in confinement, the impact of their release upon their communities, and their ability to adjust to the freedom of community life. The authors demonstrate that the patients did not display a significant level of violent behavior during confinement, nor did they pose a major threat to society after release. In fact, their social and psychological adjustment to community life is shown to have been comparable to that of non-criminal mental patients. Yet despite these findings the subjects had been retained in maximum-security confinement for an average of fourteen years because they were predicted to be violent and "dangerous" to society. The authors explain this inaccuracy by a process called "political prediction," in which clinicians avoid any potential risks to the community, the reputation of their hospitals, and their careers by consistently overpredicting dangerous behavior. The Criminally Insane will stimulate response from professionals in a wide variety of fields, including law, criminology, psychiatry, and sociology, and from anyone concerned with society's responsibility to the mentally ill offender.

Download or read book Waiting for an Echo written by Christine Montross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A haunting and harrowing indictment . . . [a] significant achievement.” —The New York Times Book Review L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist * New York Times Book Review Paperback Row * Time Best New Books July 2020 Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American jails and prisons. It is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones. Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. This expertise—the mind in crisis—has enabled her to reckon with the human stories behind mass incarceration. A father attempting to weigh the impossible calculus of a plea bargain. A bright young woman whose life is derailed by addiction. Boys in a juvenile detention facility who, desperate for human connection, invent a way to communicate with one another from cell to cell. Overextended doctors and correctional officers who strive to provide care and security in environments riddled with danger. Our methods of incarceration take away not only freedom but also selfhood and soundness of mind. In a nation where 95 percent of all inmates are released from prison and return to our communities, this is a practice that punishes us all.

Download or read book Mental Disorder and Crime written by Sheilagh Hodgins and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1992-12-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributors to this volume present and discuss new data which suggest that major mental disorder substantially increases the risk of violent crime. These findings come at a crucial time, since those who suffer from mental disorders are increasingly living in the community, rather than in institutions. The book describes the magnitude and complexity of the problem and offers hope that humane, effective intervention can prevent violent crime being committed by the seriously mentally disordered.

Download or read book The Mad the Bad and the Innocent written by Barbara Kirwin and published by HarperTorch. This book was released on 1998-09-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Into the heart of a killer The Mad Over the past twenty years, renowned forensic psychologist Barbara Kirwin has confronted a terrifying lineup of murderers, rapists, paranoids, and psychopaths--including notorious serial killer Joel Rifkin--to distinguish the truly mad from the bad trying to cop an insanity plea. The Bad Here, in chilling detail, she recalls her most grisly cases and offers riveting psychological portraits of other infamous killers, including "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz, Colin Ferguson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, Susan Smith, and John W. Hinckley, Jr. The Innocent Moving from prison holding cells to sensational courtroom trails, Kirwin tells the truth about the insanity defense and its abuse by criminal lawyers conjuring up outrageous defenses--from adopted child syndrome to postpartum psychosis to sleepwalking. As she pries open the criminal mind, Kirwin takes us on a riveting journey into the heart of darkness, where madness and evil thrive.

Download or read book Careers of the Criminally Insane written by Henry J. Steadman and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Criminal Insane in the United States and in Foreign Countries written by Samuel June Barrows and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Asylum written by Christopher Payne and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2009-09-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powerful photographs of the grand exteriors and crumbling interiors of America's abandoned state mental hospitals. For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings—and the patients who lived in them—neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors—chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, “where one could be both mad and safe.”

Download or read book Insane Consequences written by D. J. Jaffe and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2017 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this in-depth critique of the mental healthcare system, a leading advocate for the mentally ill argues that the system fails to adequately treat the most seriously ill. He proposes major reforms to bring help to schizophrenics, the severely bipolar, and others"--

Download or read book Criminally Insane written by Conrad Jones and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intense suspense thriller that draws the reader into the dark underworld alongside the police who attempt to do battle with it. Product Description Conrad Jones, nominated for a 'Gold Dagger' award 2014 An intense suspense thriller that draws the reader into the dark underworld alongside the police who attempt to do battle with it. The discovery of a brutally murdered young woman in an abandoned factory unit draws Detective Alec Ramsay and his Major Investigation team into a complex web of crime in Liverpool's underworld in this gripping thriller from acclaimed suspense writer Conrad Jones.

Download or read book Cold Storage written by Wendell Rawls and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Based on extensive interviews with over 200 patients, former patients, prisoners, families of murdered patients, guards, former guards, doctors, social workers, attorneys and bureaucrats connected with the hospital, Cold Storage takes us behind the brick walls and barred windows, behind the lies and misrepresentations, and into the very minds of those who lived and died inside Farview."--Jacket.

Download or read book Gracefully Insane written by Alex Beam and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution-one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. McLean "alumni" include Olmsted himself, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and Ray Charles, as well as (more secretly) other notables from among the rich and famous. In its "golden age," McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean-despite its affiliation with Harvard University-is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson prot'g' whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean-and other institutions like it-relics of a bygone age. This is a compelling and often oddly poignant reading for fans of books like Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted (both inspired by their author's stays at McLean) and for anyone interested in the history of medicine or psychotherapy, or the social history of New England.

Download or read book By Reason of Insanity written by Richard R. Sternberg and published by Ipbooks. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique volume offers a rare glimpse into unfamiliar-in a sense, even, forbidden-territory for most psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals. The stories are fascina*ng and sensi*vely rendered; the writing is as crisp, accessible and compelling as a strong piece of fific*on. I recommend this for anyone hungry to explore the darkest recesses of the human mind.I can state with certainty that I have never read anything like it. -Steven Kuchuck, President, Interna*onal Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, author of The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy