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. Armstrong reveals 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. In this expose-type work, Armstrong, reveals how “problem” teenagers and children have become prisoners of psychiatric hospitals. According to the author, it is greed that motivates these institutions to force young people into enduring tyrannical treatment over which they have absolutely no control. This work reveals the potential for abuse in the children’s mental health field, as well as the need for reform and children’s advocates. Those caregivers considering–or already involved with–psychiatric treatment for young people will be interested in this book.
Authors: Louise Armstrong
Publishers: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Date of Publication: 1996
No. of pages: 303