Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Mental Health, Inc.
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.mentalhealthinc.net/ * http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/art-levine
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017105215
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017105215
HEADING: Levine, Art
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372 __ |a Mental health |2 lcsh
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670 __ |a Levine, Art. Mental health, Inc, 2017: |b title page (Art Levine) dust jacket (has written for The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Salon, and other publications; was named “Journalist of the Year” by the Florida chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 2001; wrote the report Parity-plus; has exposed a wide range of corporate and government wrongdoing in a series of articles for Newsweek and The Washington Monthly, among others)
PERSONAL
Born in New York, NY.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, and editor. Progressive Policy Institute, Washington, DC, health policy fellow, 2005.
AWARDS:Journalist of the Year, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (Florida chapter), 2001, for articles in City Link; Nation Institute Investigative Fund grant.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and websites, including American Prospect, Atlantic, Mother Jones, Newsweek, AlterNet, Daily Beast, and Salon. Contributing editor to Washington Monthly.
SIDELIGHTS
Art Levine is a prize-winning journalist and editor whose articles have exposed a wide range of corporate and government wrongdoings. A contributor to various periodicals and online publications, Levine was honored in 2001 by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill for a series of articles that investigated how the mentally ill in South Florida were being criminalized. Four years later he would serve as a health policy fellow for the Progressive Policy Institute, where he wrote a report on the U.S. mental-health system titled “Parity-Plus: A Third Way Approach to Fix America’s Mental Health System.”
Levine is also the author of Mental Health Inc.: How Corruption, Lax Oversight, and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens. The book is an exposé on how the U.S. mental-health system has largely failed the mentally ill. In the process, Levine indicts profit-driven mental health care treatment facilities, the pharmaceutical industry, and the Department of Veterans Affairs and its inadequate treatment of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He also addresses the psychiatric community’s overuse of antipsychotics in children.
Writing in the book’s introduction, Levine details what he sees as the U.S. government’s assault on health-care insurance and coverage for millions of Americans. Levine goes on to write: “Even if you retain your mental health coverage … most people can’t afford it: nearly half of all psychiatrists don’t take private insurance or Medicare,” preferring patients who pay cash. Levine goes on to detail how budget cuts in mental-health care rapidly increased following the economic recession of 2008, resulting in further limiting the help mentally ill people can obtain. Levine goes on to lament: “Of course, there’s usually little public interest in addressing mental health issues at all until there’s a senseless mass shooting that shocks the country.”
According to Levine, approximately twenty percent of Americans have some sort of mental issue. Many of them are among the country’s most vulnerable, including children, the elderly, the homeless, and veterans. In detailing the problems with the mental-health system, Levine presents numerous portraits of people encountering a system that either fails to help them or which they have to fight vigorously to get needed assistance in the form of medical help and social support.
In contrast to these difficulties, Levine reveals how the giant pharmaceutical industry seem to be steeped in corruption, with suspect research and fraudulent marketing materials. Levine also profiles some of the few reformers, including some psychiatrists who have been whistleblowers and have tried hard to protect patients, sometimes winning groundbreaking settlements on both the federal and state level. Levine also presents his ideas about how the mental-health system can be reformed.
“Reading Levine’s work might very well be the key to spurring concerned stakeholders into action,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: “Levine’s compelling exposé brings the contemporary state of mental health care into stark focus.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Levine, Art, Mental Health Inc.: How Corruption, Lax Oversight, and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2017, review of Mental Health Inc.
Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2017, review of Mental Health, Inc., p. 65.
ONLINE
Art Levine Website, http://www.mentalhealthinc.net (November 8, 2017).
Art Levine, Mental Health Inc.
73
PUBLISHED
ART LEVINE, a prize-winning contributing editor of The Washington Monthly and a Nation Institute Investigative Fund grantee, has written for The American Prospect, Salon, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, Truthout, AlterNet and numerous other publications. Among other awards, he was honored as “Journalist of the Year” by the Florida chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 2001 for his articles in City Link, a Florida weekly, exploring the criminalization of the mentally ill in South Florida. In 2005, as a Health Policy Fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute, he wrote a prescient major report, Parity-Plus: A Third Way Approach to Fix America's Mental Health System that looked at roadblocks to using effective treatments. Since then, he has exposed a wide range of corporate and government wrongdoing, in a series of articles for The American Prospect, The Washington Monthly and Salon, among others.view less
Art Levine
Art Levine
Follow
Art Levine, prize-winning contributing editor of The Washington Monthly and a Nation Institute Investigative Fund grantee, has written for The American Prospect, Salon, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, Truthout, AlterNet and numerous other publications. Among other awards, he was honored as “Journalist of the Year” by the Florida chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 2001 for his articles in City Link, a Florida weekly, exploring the criminalization of the mentally ill in South Florida.
VICE says of Mental Health, Inc: “A searing indictment of the sorry state of the American mental health care system as seen from the perspective of those who have been victimized by it.”
In 2005, as a Health Policy Fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute, he wrote a prescient major report, Parity-Plus: A Third Way Approach to Fix America's Mental Health System that looked at roadblocks to using effective treatments. Since then, he has exposed a wide range of corporate and government wrongdoing, in a series of articles for The American Prospect, The Washington Monthly and Salon, among others.
in the prologue (no pg. numbers.)
11/6/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1510028850024 1/2
Print Marked Items
Levine, Art: MENTAL HEALTH, INC
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Levine, Art MENTAL HEALTH, INC. Overlook (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 5, 16 ISBN: 978-1-4683-0837-2
An alarming report on the dire state of our nation's mental health care industry.Citing the multibillion-dollar budget cuts
after the 2008 recession, increasingly overloaded community clinics, the dangers of drug-based outpatient Medicaid
programs, and the impending repeal of the Affordable Care Act, Washington Monthly contributing editor Levine
presents a foreboding look at the status of contemporary mental health care in the United States. The author delivers the
statistics in a harrowing introductory chapter that spotlights the dangers lurking in the "low quality and sometimes
deadly care" that is becoming the standard for those seeking treatment. Levine reinforces his pleas for reform with
profiles and true stories of everyone from young children to military vets with PTSD to nursing home communities, all
left at the mercy of mental illness by a health care system rampant with weak regulatory oversight, maltreatment, and
reckless off-label drug prescriptions. With scores of victims remaining oversedated and often neglected by an inferior,
"out-of-control, profit-driven" network, the decades of appeals for reform Levine cites duly reflect just how "little has
fundamentally changed in how we treat people with serious mental illness." The author also expertly probes the
Veterans Administration's "secret history" of deadly wait times and scandalous incompetence, the dangerous marketing
schemes surrounding the bipolar medication Seroquel, and the Los Angeles County women's jail, where 20 percent of
inmates suffer from some form of "serious" mental illness. Counterbalancing his own dystopian view, Levine introduces
us to the advocates hard at work improving and enhancing the industry and thereby restoring the lives of those affected
by its shortcomings. Amid a surfeit of drug company scandals, lawsuits, and blatant wrongdoings, Levine's compelling
exposee brings the contemporary state of mental health care into stark focus. But it also fairly offers redemption and
hope in the form of modern-day heroes armed with proactive recovery programs and alternative therapies. An urgent,
balanced, eye-opening plea for mental health care reform.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Levine, Art: MENTAL HEALTH, INC." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485105074&it=r&asid=bc3270b2345b782e8d04341e8b0c21bb.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105074
11/6/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1510028850024 2/2
Mental Health, Inc.: How Corruption, Lax
Oversight, and Failed Reforms Endanger Our
Most Vulnerable Citizens
Publishers Weekly.
264.12 (Mar. 20, 2017): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Mental Health, Inc.: How Corruption, Lax Oversight, and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens
Art Levine. Overlook, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4683-0837-2
Levine, an investigative journalist, reveals how the nexus of power formed by the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA,
Medicare, and Medicaid works against patients' best interests. His overall complaint is the improper use of
antipsychotic medicines. For example, he writes, "over 90 percent of the estimated two million kids on Medicaid who
received antipsychotics are prescribed them without the approval of the FDA"--meaning for uses other than those the
FDA approved, also known as "off-label" uses. This problem is particularly pronounced at VA hospitals, he shows.
Levine devotes each chapter to a different aspect of pharmaceutical abuse and corruption, which he humanizes with
patients' stories. While he describes a horrifying panoply of problems, he also portrays whistleblowers and other heroes
who work to protect patients. This well-researched book reveals the scope of an entrenched problem, but it also offers
hope. Levine is optimistic that balanced treatment, with appropriate dosages and uses of antipsychotics in combination
with other therapies, can greatly alleviate mental illness. Reading Levine's work might very well be the key to spurring
concerned stakeholders into action. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Mental Health, Inc.: How Corruption, Lax Oversight, and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens."
Publishers Weekly, 20 Mar. 2017, p. 65. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487601800&it=r&asid=e7d6f7d6788bfced6ba394d6f7eb4dc9.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487601800