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

Description

From the bestselling author of Kiss Daddy Goodnight, comes this powerful investigative journey into a multibillion-dollar industry that imprisons America’s children—for profit. Here and now, every year, thousands of kids are transported to a locked world where strange rules prevail and language is without meaning. Those in authority are empowered to administer drugs to kids, forcibly restrain them, lock them in isolation. Yet it is the kids who are told over and over that they are the weird ones, the psychiatrically incorrect. Armstrong is our incisive, often witty guide as we visit this world of “Therapeutic” institutions—the psychiatric hospitals, the residential treatment centers, the schools for the “emotionally disturbed”—and meet kids like Joey, Delia, Mike, John.… What is it like for kids in this world? And what has brought us to accept and endorse the ideologies of the authorities who administer this psychiatric policing to our children? What brings even five-year-olds—who have committed no offense against person or property—under psychiatric scrutiny? What is the role schools play? And what makes this system so seemingly impervious to challenge—except in the most egregious instances? These are the stories behind the stories that have grabbed news headlines nationwide: the rampant captivity of normal kids in facilities that are supposedly for “treatment” and “help.”