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

by Louise Armstrong

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology

306 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1993

Reviews

[Krista Schumacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"[I]t is ingenuous of us to imagine that psy intervention can do children no harm." -- Louise Armstrong

This book tells the story of the psychiatric commitment of hundreds of thousands of Gen X children and teens throughout the 1980s. Profit, rather than the kids' well-being, motivated many of these commitments. All that was required was parental consent and a diagnosis by a psychiatrist, often employed by the hospital that stood to benefit financially by the commitment. It's one of psychiatry's most egregious abuses of power in modern history.

Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote in his dissent to the 1979 case Parham v. J.R. that opened the doors to psychiatric abuses of America's kids, "[C]hildren erroneously institutionalized during their formative years may bear scars for the rest of their lives.” As someone who experienced forced psy commitment as a teen, I can attest that his prophecy was correct. It's been almost 40 years, and I still feel the effects.

I recommend Banning Lyon's memoir The Chair and the Valley: A Memoir of Trauma, Healing, and the Outdoors about his experience in a psychiatric hospital as a teen in the 1980s.

[Joanne Baines · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a frightening book. Fed all my fears perfectly.