Presumed Crazy relates the story of an elderly disabled former
fishing guide who was ensnared in his state's civil commitment
(court-state hospital - nursing home - guardianship) quagmire, what
the author calls the "mental health gulag." Because he had stopped
taking a drug that was making him ill, he was placed on a 72 hour
hold for so-called "noncompliance" and for using God as a
consultant to decide what to do (praying). He was spirited away to
a hospital 50 miles away from his home where commitment procedures
were improperly carried out. The county probate court dismantled
his home, consigned his property, income and bank account to a
company acting as a "guardian." They forced him into locked
confinement in a state hospital where he experienced psychological
abuse, assaulted him with a drug that caused him severe adverse
side effects, deprived him of therapy that had been effective in
maintaining his physical functioning, and squandered an estimated
quarter of a million dollars or more in federal funds on
ineffective custodial care that wasn't even needed. There was nary
so much as a "Sorry about that" when the commitment was rescinded
after a new psychiatrist declared that he did not have an Axis I
disorder and therefore did not meet the requirements for compulsory
incarceration As a result of his confinement, his physical
condition deteriorated and he had to be discharged to a series of
nursing homes that provided inadequate care under unsanitary
conditions. More than a chronicle of one man's misfortunes,
Presumed Crazy is a book about a mental health system that can be
arrogant, unjust, incompetent and inhumane in its treatment of
those who fall into its clutches. The author indicts laws, lawyers
and the courts, psychiatrists and the mental illness industry, drug
companies, social service agencies, for-profit nursing homes, and
the guardianship "business," all of which plague this entire
country and its citizens. The author provides statistics, research
evidence, history, personality theory, relevant state, federal and
international law, and commentary by people who have been victims
of the system as well as experts in the field, within his narrative
of the plight of Bill Tollefson, his friend of over six decades who
suffered and died in the gulag.
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