“I had no idea,” begins Pete Earley’s Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness—and it quickly becomes apparent that most of us have no true idea of the perilous state of our nation’s mental health system. Unless it forces itself into our families and our homes, most of us avoid any interaction with mental illness.
The One Book One Community program chose Crazy, which was nominated for the nonfiction Pulitzer Prize, as its summer selection, hoping as always that the entire Baton Rouge community would read Crazy and discuss the issues that Earley raises.
When Earley announced his Baton Rouge OBOC appearance, he cited a recent Treatment Advocacy Center study showing that, in Louisiana, there are 4.6 mentally ill people in jail for every one in a hospital. As Earley says in Crazy, “If it could happen to my family, it could happen to yours.”