Book Review by Kartar Diamond: Breakdown, Author Lynn Nanos

I had a very personal interest in reading Breakdown, by Lynn Nanos, because I have a family member with schizophrenia. Along with many others, I have felt intensely frustrated with every aspect of the mental health care system, including hospitals and their staff. I needed to find out what she had to report from her own professional experiences as a mobile emergency psychiatric clinician, with the special skills and ability to orchestrate involuntary hospital admissions.

The book is well written, heart-wrenching in many of the real patient stories. I could well imagine the author going home each night, still worrying about the safety and continuum of care (or lack of it) for those she evaluated each day. And in the current times we live in, with such a severe shortage of hospital beds in psychiatric wings, I was shocked to learn from her research that about 12% of those admitted for emergency psychiatric care are what the mental health care industry calls “malingerers.”

These are folks who don’t fit the criteria for gravely ill when they are evaluated, but they work the system so they can gain admission and have a nice all-expenses paid mini-vacation in a hospital. This is also at the expense of so many desperate people who really do need the care, but there are no beds available for them. My own family member once spent five days in the E.R. at USC…