Sons’ stories drive sad, angry account
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Powers (“Flags of Our Fathers”) tells two stories in his searing new book. One is about the distressing history of the treatment of mental illness in this country, and about its equally depressing present state.
The other is about the lives of his two sons, both of whom suffered from schizophrenia. One killed himself while in the disease’s grip.
Powers alternates the two strands in “No One Cares About Crazy People,” which comes out Tuesday. The personal story gives an emotional depth to the broader-ranging account, which in turn explains some of the problems his family encountered.
Although the historical sections of the book don’t necessarily cover new ground, they summarize with barely contained anger and occasional pitch-black humor the ups and — more often — the downs of life for the mentally ill over the past couple of centuries.
Because schizophrenia, a disease still too little understood, is Powers’ main focus, he pays little attention to advances in treatment for other forms of mental illness.
His attitude toward drug therapy is ambivalent: He recognizes that “Big Pharma” has made money distributing drugs of questionable usefulness. But he also acknowledges that some of the drugs are effective in, if not curing schizophrenia, at least managing its symptoms. They continue to do so for his surviving son.
Powers reserves his hottest indignation for “deinstitutionalization,” the possibly well-intended closing of most institutions ■ for the mentally ill. It was intended to transfer the patients to community facilities, but instead it left many of them homeless and at risk. As a result, he maintains, prisons have become de facto institutions for the mentally ill.
Based on brutal personal experience, Powers also argues against laws that prevent families of schizophrenics experiencing anosognosia (“the false conviction within a person that nothing is wrong with his mind”) from committing them to hospitals against their will.
The sections of the book dealing with his two sons are poignant and touching. Tributes rather than objective analyses, they reflect the loss of one son and the adjustments that the author, his wife and his older son had to make after the older son’s illness became apparent.
Powers sometimes seems, understandably, to be flailing to find someone or something to blame for the effect of this disease on his family. And he spends longer than necessary rehashing a court case in which his elder son was convicted of reckless driving in an incident that severely injured a young woman in the car with him.
“I hope you do not ‘enjoy’ this book,” Powers writes.
If it’s too horrifying to be enjoyable, it’s certainly moving, and it should shape attitudes toward individuals whose suffering it might be more pleasant to ignore.