An Intimate Journey into America’s Mental Health Crisis
(Avery, 2019)

A psychiatrist and award-winning documentarian sheds light on the mental health care crisis in the U.S.

When Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg trained as a psychiatrist in the late 1980s, the state mental hospitals, which had reached peak occupancy in the ’50s, were being closed at an alarming rate, with many patients having nowhere to go. There has never been a more important time for this conversation, as one in five adults–40 million Americans–experiences mental illness each year. Today, the largest mental institution in the U.S. is the LA County Jail, and the last refuge for many of the 20,000 mentally ill people living on the streets of Los Angeles is LA County Hospital. There, Dr. Rosenberg begins his chronicle of what it means to be mentally ill in America today, integrating his own moving story of how the system failed his sister, Merle, who had schizophrenia. As he says, “I have to come to see that my family’s tragedy is an American tragedy. My family’s shame is America’s great secret.”

Dr. Rosenberg gives readers an inside look at the historical, political, and economic forces that have resulted in the greatest social crisis of the twenty-first century. The culmination of a seven year inquiry into the lives of Americans with severe mental illness, Bedlam is a not only a rallying cry for change, but with also a guidebook for how we move forward with care and compassion.

For more information about Dr. Rosenberg, please go to https://drkenrosenberg.com.