Dayhoff Soundtrack: NPR Fresh Air: Father of 2 Sons with Schizophrenia Talks of His Struggle to Save Them

Tuesday, April 04, 2017

NPR Fresh Air: Father of 2 Sons with Schizophrenia Talks of His Struggle to Save Them

March 20, 2017 Heard on Fresh Air http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/20/520809904/father-of-2-sons-with-schizophrenia-talks-of-his-struggle-to-save-them?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20170326&utm_campaign=bestofnpr&utm_term=nprnews

As the father of two sons with schizophrenia, author Ron Powers is familiar with the pain and frustration of dealing with a chronic, incurable disease of the brain.

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On the effects of deinstitutionalization in the 1960s on people with mental illness

The advent of the so-called "wonder drugs" like Thorazine ... were touted as cures for schizophrenia — they weren't. At best they were cures for symptoms. But on the strength of Thorazine and its great consumer success and promise, President Kennedy, seeking to do the right thing, signed legislation ... in 1963 ... that authorized the emptying out of mental asylums and the transferring of their patients, their inmates, hopefully into community care centers that were going to be built around the country to receive them.

Deinstitutionalization was a catastrophic social experiment, one of the worst we've ever had. It ended up creating the [mentally ill] homeless population that still plagues us today.

The second terrible effect of deinstitutionalization was that many of the people never ended up in the community centers. The government ran out of money. They couldn't build enough to contain this outflow of patients, so they ended up on the streets, and from the streets they ended up in prison. Many of them. Today our prisons are overflowing with the mentally ill. Prisons are our de facto mental hospitals.

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