Analysis Of Crazy, By Pete Earley

Stuck in a revolving door. You move forward, think you have made progress, but then you realize you are in the same place you were earlier. Constantly going in circles. This is the life of the average victim of mental illness who has committed a crime due to a manic episode where they were not in control of their actions. In this passage from his book, Crazy, Pete Earley highlights the flaws of the mental health system which cause these people to be stuck in an endless cycle. Through the juxtaposition of the cause and effect of an inneffective mental health system, Earley reveals that without change in the system, a solution to the struggles of receiving treatment as a victim of mental illness will never come about. There is an obvious problem with the mental health system, with jails receiving patients who they believe are being treated coming back still sick; the system is ineffective and is utterly useless. From the beginning of the passage, there is an emphasis of the notion …show more content…
This would take two months to do, often resulting in the deterioration of the patient's mental condition during this time, especially because they were held in cells while naked. This extra detail which Earley adds to his description paints a troubling image that expresses the inhumane treatment of the patients. In addition to the time needed to perform the examinations on the patients, there was also “a backlog of inmates waiting to be evaluated in Chattahoochee,” resulting in “the defendant [sitting] in the Miami jail for another full year” (20). The main contribution to the ineffectiveness by the jail, evidently, was time; although they received the majority of their patients as competent, the time elapsed between their arrival at the jail and their trial was enough to allow the patient’s mental illness to take over, once