Overview

Mentally ill and addicted persons currently overwhelm our streets and prisons. The full story of how this issue evolved remains unknown. But Dr. Ed Kaufman has seen the problem develop over the past five decades. He carefully describes the evolution through multiple systems including courts, legislation, state hospitals, community mental health centers, jails, prisons, therapeutics communities, homeless shelters and elite private centers. His story is not a dry academic tale, but uses human stories of mentally ill, addicted patients and inmates alongside those of judges and mental health professionals. This book also provides workable evidence based prevention and treatment programs, presented as alternatives to incarceration, plus poignant case histories of individuals who have benefited from such programs.

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9780986285370

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Dr. Kaufman's psychiatric residency began at Columbia University in 1961. In the years since then, he witnessed all aspects of what led to the mass incarceration of the mentally ill and addicted in the USA. His work in every kind of mental institution followed the shift when mental health care began to lead to imprisonment. He saw the early glory years and the demise of community psychiatry, becoming an expert evaluator and witness in legal suits to mandate adequate and humane mental health and addiction care. Recently he obtained an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction to better tell the tales of these trapped individuals. Today he works in successful community alternatives to incarceration.

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