Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy

In this powerful, scathing indictment, Sharkey ( Above Suspicion ) exposes profound venality and criminally actionable practices in today's psychiatric industry. He ascribes soaring medical health costs (more than $125 billion in 1991) to a conspiracy involving the biopsychiatric profession, for-profit mental and addiction facilities, drug and insurance companies. He further charges that many in the psychiatric profession have abandoned the severely mentally ill while private, investor-owned hospitals offer bounties of up to $1500 to clergy, teachers, police and ``crisis counselors'' for recruiting--one Texas legislator uses the term ``body-snatching''--troubled adults, adolescents and children covered by insurance policies that pay up to $30,000 for inpatient care. In 1993, the fraud practiced by Medicare- and Medicaid-subsidized hospital chains such as National Medical Enterprises, with 86 psychiatric hospitals and revenues of $1.74 billion in 1991, was revealed by the FBI. The psychiatric industry, Sharkey warns in this chilling, well-documented account, is lobbying for a large slice of the health reform pie and continues to ``create mental illness with advertising.'' (Apr.)