And They Call It Help: The Psychiatric Policing of America's Children - Hardcover

Armstrong, Louise

4.25

12 ratings by Goodreads

9780201577945: And They Call It Help: The Psychiatric Policing of America's Children

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201577941 ISBN 13: 9780201577945

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1993

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An expose+a7 of the multibillion-dollar industry that imprisons America's children for profit describes what goes on at the psychiatric hospitals, treatment centers, and schools of the emotionally disturbed.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

An eye-opening journey into the world of children in residential treatment centers, psychiatric hospitals, and other therapeutic institutional settings. Outspoken and outraged, Armstrong continues the victim-as- perpetrator theme she explored earlier in her work on domestic violence (The Home Front, 1983) and incest (Kiss Daddy Goodnight- -not reviewed). Here, she attacks psychiatry as a form of ideological imperialism that claims an ever-growing list of behaviors, feelings, and thoughts as problems that require treatment. According to Armstrong, society's acceptance of the labeling of ordinary human problems as ``mental illnesses'' has meant that children who are unwanted or whose behavior troubles their parents, teachers, or guardians are increasingly being treated with incarceration and drugs. The author looks at the marketing of psychiatric services and interviews those who operate treatment centers, as well as the kids who have spent time in them. Abuses are apparent, and Armstrong makes clear her exasperation with the system she's examining. But what really makes her blood boil is the jargon she finds in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard reference by which psychiatry defines the conditions that it treats. Since the 1950's, the list has grown from some 60 types of mental illness to hundreds of ``mental disorders'' like tobacco dependence and school-learning problems. When such conditions become labeled as illnesses, insurance companies reimburse therapists for treating them, and the mental-health industry thrives. Armstrong rails at society's acceptance of this process and the harm it's inflicting on children--whom she views as often the innocent victims of society's ills in the first place. In the tradition of old-fashioned muckraking journalism- -clear in its anger and in its call for change--and sure to evoke heated responses from psychiatrists and their allies. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Tangled up in her rage and maddeningly complex sentences, the author develops a valuable expose of the fate of many children and adolescents assigned to psychiatric hospitals and mental health treatment centers in the U.S. Although Armstrong ( Kiss Daddy Goodnight ) fails to lay out the problem in a coherent form, she does reveal such startling practices as marketing campaigns of for-profit institutions. Reporting that juvenile hospitalization in the late 1980s burgeoned, she adds, "evidence emerged everywhere that the boom in psychiatric institutionalization was reimbursement driven"--the institution's costs being paid by the state and/or insurance companies. She charges that normal children who are in abnormal situations, e.g., children whom the state has removed from abusive parents, and those whose adolescent behaviors are at odds with their parents' expectations, are too readily institutionalized. Most convincing when relating conversations with kids who talk about their experiences in institutions, Armstrong diminishes the effect of her effort with her constant stream of angry asides.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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