My Brother's Keeper

A leading psychiatrist seeks to transform our understanding of mental health care and how it fits into larger social and economic forces—and proposes an effective and compassionate new framework for healing.

Mental health care in America has become nothing short of atrocious. Supposed developments in treatment methods and medication remain inaccessible to those who need them most. Countless people seeking treatment are routinely funneled into homelessness and prison while a mental health epidemic ravages younger generations. It seems obvious that the system is broken, but the tragic truth is that it is actually functioning exactly as intended, providing reliably enormous profits for the corporate entities who now manage mental healthcare.

It is easy to turn a blind eye. Most of us are more comfortable ducking our own fears about mental health and placing our faith in the rugged American individual and the free market, rather than confronting our own prejudices and misguided beliefs. Why did we choose to build such a disastrous system when every other industrialized nation has developed far better models? After decades of work in psychiatry, Dr. Nicholas Rosenlicht reveals how and why we arrived at this abysmal reality—and more importantly, how we can find our way out of it.

Timely and unflinching, and written with commanding prose and the deep knowledge of a mental health care veteran who categorically rejects corporate interests, Dr. Rosenlicht makes plain the disastrous outcomes of the for-profit mental health care model. Patients are “clients” and doctors are “providers,” stripping away the human element and emboldening shifty ethical and legal practices. Perhaps most insidious, the business model paints the mentally ill as the “other,” as people who just don’t want help, rather than someone who can’t afford care or even realize they need help as a consequence of their illness. But a path forward does exist. Mental illness is something that will touch all of us in some way, if not directly through those we know and love. Those who have already helped care for a loved one know that those who suffer from it have hopes, desires, and aspirations. A healthy solution means a healthier society. In the tradition of Andrew Solomon or Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score, My Brother's Keeper is a paradigm-shifting book that can help us find our way to real and lasting solutions.