Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Lyme
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1958?
WEBSITE: https://www.thefirstepidemic.com/
CITY:
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | nr2007010432 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/nr2007010432 |
| HEADING: | Pfeiffer, Mary Beth |
| 000 | 00326nz a2200121n 450 |
| 001 | 7202799 |
| 005 | 20070609033117.0 |
| 008 | 070608n| acannaabn |n aaa c |
| 010 | __ |a nr2007010432 |
| 035 | __ |a (DLC)nr2007010432 |
| 040 | __ |a CU-L |b eng |c CU-L |
| 100 | 1_ |a Pfeiffer, Mary Beth |
| 670 | __ |a Crazy in America, 2007: |b t.p. (Mary Beth Pfeiffer) |
PERSONAL
Born c. 1958, in New York, NY; married Robert Miraldi (a doctor); children: two.
EDUCATION:Marist College, graduated, 1976.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Staten Island Advance, NY, reporter; Poughkeepsie Journal, NY, reporter, 1982-2015, projects writer.
AVOCATIONS:Hiking, exercising.
AWARDS:Justice Media Fellowship, Soros Foundation, 2004-05; Sigma Delta Chi Award, Society for Professional Journalists, 2013. Other awards from organizations, including the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Society of the Silurians, New York City Deadline Club, Gannett Company, Associated Press Managing Editors, Inter America Press Association, National Headliner Awards, Scripps Howard Foundation.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Mary Beth Pfeiffer is a journalist and graduate of Marist College. She began her career as a reporter at the Staten Island Advance and joined the Poughkeepsie Journal in 1982. Pfeiffer continued to work at that publication until 2015.
Crazy in America
In 2007, Pfeiffer released her first book, Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill. In this volume, she criticizes the practice of putting the mentally ill in jail instead of treating their respective conditions. She profiles six people suffering from mental problems, highlighting the time they have spent in prison and their experiences while they have been incarcerated. One of these people is called Luke. When his bipolar disorder went untreated, Luke began using drugs and was involved in violent altercations with others. His behavior caused him to be thrown in prison in Texas. Another subject in the book is a woman named Shayne Eggen. Shayne was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager and was put in juvenile psychiatric hospitals. However, as an adult her options for treatment dwindled, and she began committing crimes and being thrown in jail. While suffering from a delusional episode, Shayne stabbed a deputy sheriff. She was sent to prison but found it difficult to assimilate. Instead of recognizing Shayne’s mental problems, prison guards punished her for not behaving as she was told.
Writing on the Metapsychology website, Tony O’Brien suggested: “Crazy in America is written in a racy journalistic style. Pfeiffer has an endless list of examples to cite in support of her arguments.” O’Brien added: “While there may be many who identify with the stories she tells, it is to be hoped the book is read by clinicians, policy makers and planners as it is clear that there are changes necessary at many levels of the mental health and criminal justice systems.” Abraham Nussbaum, reviewer on the Psychiatry Online website, commented: “This book is neither a meta-analysis nor a policy statement but an appropriate book from which to select a section, perhaps the story of Shayne, to press upon legislators and students.” Referring to Pfeiffer, David Preston, critic on the Prison Legal News website, remarked: “Admirably, she never succumbs to the temptation to coddle her subjects or minimize their offenses. In trying to humanize these subjects, however, Pfeiffer devotes too many pages to background information. Mixed in with the biographical detail are frequent references to mental health and prison budget figures, numbers of psychiatric beds lost versus prison cells built. … As a result the writing sometimes comes across as an ungainly mixture of human interest-type reporting and PowerPoint slide show. Nevertheless, the book makes a lucid and devastatingly effective case.”
Lyme
Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, released in 2018, finds Pfeiffer arguing that increased global temperatures have led to an increase in the tick population, which has in turn caused a rising number of people who have been infected with Lyme disease. She suggests that government health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health do not recognize the severity of the disease or recommend treatment that works to cure patients who have it. Pfeiffer also discusses the categories used to diagnose those with the disease and new treatments that may be more effective than the recommended single round of antibiotics.
In an interview with George Vernadakis, contributor to the Everyday Health website, Pfeiffer discussed the connection between climate change and the increase in cases of Lyme disease. She stated: “There’s a lot of data out there showing a correlation between the movement of ticks and the rise in temperatures, but I wouldn’t say it’s universally accepted in the medical or scientific literature. Canadian researcher John Scott, for example, disputes it. He’s not a climate change denier, but he doesn’t believe that ticks are moving because of it. He thinks there’s more awareness of ticks and Lyme disease now, so more people are coming forward and being diagnosed. He also thinks the ticks were already in these places for a long time.” Pfeiffer added: “It’s not just a warmer climate that’s moving the ticks around. It’s how we live. We live in idealized suburban communities, where we try to maintain a sort of natural landscape. But that kind of altered landscape is not in its natural state. We don’t have the diversity of species, one keeping the other in check.”
Dorothy Kupcha Leland, reviewer on the LymeDisease.org website, commented: “Its comprehensive look at the worldwide implications of Lyme disease fills a gaping need.” Leland concluded: “Lyme … is a groundbreaking book. It should be read by anyone who cares about the health of our planet and the people who live on it.” “Pfeiffer’s indignation … create a high emotional pitch that can be exhausting, but the basic facts she sets forth are credible, and they deserve immediate attention,” suggested a Kirkus Reviews critic.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2007, Vanessa Bush, review of Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of the Criminalized Mentally Ill, p. 7.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change.
ONLINE
Everyday Health, https://www.everydayhealth.com/ (June 11, 2018), George Vernadakis, author interview.
Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (July 6, 2018), author profile.
Lyme book website, https://www.thefirstepidemic.com/ (July 6, 2018), author profile.
LymeDisease.org, https://www.lymedisease.org/ (March 12, 2018), Dorothy Kupcha Leland, review of Lyme.
Metapsychology, http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/ (March 25, 2008), Tony O’Brien, review of Crazy In America.
Poughkeepsie Journal Online, https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ (July 6, 2018), author profile.
Prison Legal News, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/ (May 15, 2008), David Preston, review of Crazy In America.
Psychiatry Online, https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/ (June 24, 2018), Abraham Nussbaum, review of Crazy In America.
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
A distinguished career as an investigative reporter.
Mary Beth Pfeiffer, author of Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, has been an award-winning investigative journalist for three decades. A reporter who has specialized in social justice, environmental and health issues, she is also author of Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill. The book is a critically acclaimed look at treatment of the mentally ill in prisons and jails in the United States.
Pfeiffer’s reporting for the Poughkeepsie Journal drew national attention in 2001 when she documented the suicides of mentally ill inmates in round-the-clock solitary confinement. As a 2004-2005 Soros Justice Media Fellow, she found systemic abuse in lockups across the nation, where people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were subjected to psychologically torturous isolation. Her October 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine, about the suicide of a 21-year-old mentally ill woman in solitary confinement, became the genesis of Crazy in America.
Since 2012, Pfeiffer has become the leading U.S. investigative journalist on the growth of and controversies surrounding Lyme disease, a hidden menace that, she argues, has been fostered by a warming world while being vastly underestimated and poorly managed by American medicine.
For her Lyme reporting, Pfeiffer was honored with a half-dozen awards, including the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi award in 2013 from the Society for Professional Journalists, one of her two Sigma Delta Chi awards. For other reports, she has been honored by the Scripps Howard Foundation, National Headliner Awards, Inter America Press Association, Associated Press Managing Editors, the Gannett Company, New York City Deadline Club, Society of the Silurians, and National Council on Crime and Delinquency, among others.
A tick found on Bushwick. Photos by Janet Graham Gottlieb.
A tick found on Bushwick. Photos by Janet Graham Gottlieb.
Photo by Jim Smith Photography
Photo by Jim Smith Photography
Born and raised in New York City, Pfeiffer graduated from Marist College in Poughkeepsie in 1976. She began her career at the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance. In 1982, she joined the staff of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal, where her investigative reports on New York State prisons won a dozen state and national awards from 2001 to 2006. Her articles in the 2010s exposed an estimated $15 billion in overpayments by the federal government to New York State institutions for the developmentally disabled. After Congressional hearings, the state revamped the funding system and forced New York to fulfill its promise to transfer residents to more humane homes in the community.
In 2015, Pfeiffer left the Journal, which she credits with supporting her research in a way that few small news organization do. She is forever indebted.
Pfeiffer is married to Dr. Robert Miraldi, whom she met when both were reporters at the Staten Island Advance. Miraldi, a Fulbright scholar and journalism professor, is author of Seymour Hersh: Scoop Artist. They have two children, four grandchildren and a Shih Tzu named Bushwick.
Mary Beth, with her Shih Tzu Bushwick, walks a trail across the lane from her upstate New York home.
Mary Beth, with her Shih Tzu Bushwick, walks a trail across the lane from her upstate New York home.
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative journalist. Her book, "Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change," will be published in 2018. It can be ordered at http://amzn.to/2iXup1u. Follow her on Twitter: @marybethpf
Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative journalist who has written on Lyme disease since 2012. Her book on the global spread of tick-borne disease, "Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change," will be published in 2018 by Island Press, Washington, D.C. She is author of "Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill" (Basic Books, 2007).
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Projects writer
I am projects writer for the Journal, where I have worked since 1982. I do long-range investigative reporting, often involving series of articles over many months. My investigation of Lyme disease, written with my colleague John Ferro, began in 2012 and has involved more than a dozen major installments. Other projects have examined the of use of stun guns by police; Medicaid overcharges by New York State at centers for the developmentally disabled; menus and financing of school lunch programs, and pensions and overtime of government employees. In the early 2000s, I wrote articles on the suicides of mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement units in state prisons. This led to a fellowship, in 2004, from the Open Society Institute, under which I did national reporting on mental illness and the criminal justice system, with an article in The New York Times Magazine about the prison suicide of a Poughkeepsie woman, 21, who had been incarcerated at age 16. My book, “Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of the Criminalized Mentally Ill,” was published in 2007, and is, unfortunately, still relevant. I am a graduate of Marist College and live across a country lane from a cornfield-turned-meadow in Ulster County. I love investigative reporting, my family and my Shih Tzu, Mattingly. I like to work out, hike and listen to The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.
QUOTED: "There’s a lot of data out there showing a correlation between the movement of ticks and the rise in temperatures, but I wouldn’t say it’s universally accepted in the medical or scientific literature. Canadian researcher John Scott, for example, disputes it. He’s not a climate change denier, but he doesn’t believe that ticks are moving because of it. He thinks there’s more awareness of ticks and Lyme disease now, so more people are coming forward and being diagnosed. He also thinks the ticks were already in these places for a long time."
"It’s not just a warmer climate that’s moving the ticks around. It’s how we live. We live in idealized suburban communities, where we try to maintain a sort of natural landscape. But that kind of altered landscape is not in its natural state. We don’t have the diversity of species, one keeping the other in check."
Author Mary Beth Pfeiffer discusses her new book about the tick-borne disease.
By George Vernadakis
Don't Miss This
7 Ticks That Can Make You Sick
7 Ticks That Can Make You Sick
10 Essential Facts About Lyme Disease
10 Essential Facts About Lyme Disease
TIAA
IN THE LAST 3 YEARS, WE'VE SHARED $10B IN PROFITS
Sponsored by TIAA
Sign Up for Our Healthy Living Newsletter
Sign up
We respect your privacy.
Investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer’s book examines the upsurge in Lyme disease and the factors behind it.
Investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer’s book examines the upsurge in Lyme disease and the factors behind it.Jim Smith Photography; Island Press
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report last month on vector-borne diseases, the data was alarming. It showed that diseases carried by ticks, mosquitoes, and fleas had more than tripled in the United States between 2004 and 2016.
According to the CDC report, tick-borne diseases accounted for 77 percent of all vector-borne disease cases reported. Among illnesses spread by ticks, Lyme disease was the dominant one, representing 82 percent of all tick-borne cases.
More than four decades after Lyme disease was first diagnosed, the bacterial infection continues to spread. About 30,000 cases nationwide are reported to the CDC each year, but the actual number of people infected could be 10 times higher. Treatment with antibiotics is often effective, though not foolproof, and there is currently no vaccine.
Questions and controversies persist about Lyme disease — its diagnosis, how it's treated, and the potential long-term effects it can have on people who become infected. In her new book Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer examines the current state of this enigmatic disease that's spreading rapidly around the world. Pfeiffer recently spoke with Everyday Health’s George Vernadakis.
ADVERTISING
Repatha® (evolocumab)
www.repathahcp.com
Learn About Repatha® as a
Treatment Option for Patients.
Q: You categorize Lyme disease as “the first epidemic caused by climate change.” Do experts on the disease generally agree that warmer temperatures are driving ticks into places where it used to be too cold for them to survive?
A: There’s a lot of data out there showing a correlation between the movement of ticks and the rise in temperatures, but I wouldn’t say it’s universally accepted in the medical or scientific literature.
Canadian researcher John Scott, for example, disputes it. He’s not a climate change denier, but he doesn’t believe that ticks are moving because of it. He thinks there’s more awareness of ticks and Lyme disease now, so more people are coming forward and being diagnosed. He also thinks the ticks were already in these places for a long time. [Scott had a study on the subject published in March 2018 in the Journal of Veterinary Science and Medicine.]
But I think the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that climate change is the main issue.
Q: If climate change is the main issue, what other factors are contributing to Lyme’s spread and recent upsurge?
A: It’s not just a warmer climate that’s moving the ticks around. It’s how we live. We live in idealized suburban communities, where we try to maintain a sort of natural landscape. But that kind of altered landscape is not in its natural state. We don’t have the diversity of species, one keeping the other in check.
There’s been research, for instance, that a drop in the number of foxes means more mice [that can transmit Lyme disease bacteria to ticks] survive in suburban enclaves. [A study published in July 2012 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, titled “Deer, Predators, and the Emergence of Lyme Disease,” investigated this phenomenon.]
So, it’s a lack of biodiversity, it’s how we live, it’s where we live, and it’s the change in our climate — it’s all driving this. And it’s driving this disease in many, many countries.
Q: In the book, you quote Durland Fish, PhD, an entomologist at the Yale Public School of Health, saying that “Lyme disease is the tip of the iceberg.” How is Lyme just part of the story when it comes to tick-borne illness?
A: We know that ticks often carry more than one pathogen. Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, is the leading one in most every study I’ve read.
The second leading organism is Babesia, a parasite that causes babesiosis — a malaria-like illness. It’s pretty serious, and people sometimes die from it.
If you have both Lyme and babesiosis, and you’re only treated for one disease, you’re not going to get better. [A study published in June 2014 in PLoS One found that co-infection of ticks with Babesia and B. burgdorferi is more common than expected.]
Doctors have been given precious little guidance on how to approach a situation where someone has multiple infections. That’s greatly complicating the Lyme disease treatment picture.
Q: The onset of Lyme disease is commonly associated with a bullseye-shaped rash called an erythema migrans. But that’s not always a reliable way of diagnosing the disease, is it?
A: If you have the characteristic Lyme rash, then yes, a doctor can diagnose you. But the best case is that 70 percent of people get the rash. What about the other 30 percent who don’t? And the rash can appear in different ways. It can be clear in the center and red on the outside, like a bullseye, but it can also be all red. It can be shaped strangely, or it may have little blisters in it. So it’s often not recognized.
Q: How reliable is the two-step blood test for Lyme that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends?
A: There are lapses in the test itself. Only 30 to 40 percent of early cases correctly test positive. That’s a pretty low rate of success. The test does get better as time goes on. But it isn’t until you get to what is called the late disseminated stage of Lyme, when it’s throughout your body, that you get 90 percent and higher sensitivity or success.
Q: Once it’s diagnosed, Lyme disease is typically treated with antibiotics. How well does this course of treatment work?
A: Mainstream medicine asserts that 10 to 20 days of antibiotics generally kills the pathogen in your body. But the CDC and National Institutes of Health (NIH) also accept that 10 to 20 percent of treated people will remain ill for weeks, months, or sometimes years. That’s 30,000 to 60,000 people a year. We’re doing very little to help these people.
Q: There’s a lot of talk about the need for a Lyme disease vaccine. The last one, LYMErix, was pulled off the market in 2002 due to concerns about adverse effects and a drop in sales. Do you think a new vaccine is the answer?
A: There’s little doubt that we need a vaccine. But a Lyme-only vaccine would be very limited. It also runs the risk of making people complacent. You don’t want people thinking, “I’m protected against ticks,” because other pathogens are coming on strong.
Q: Why do you think Lyme disease isn’t getting the attention, research, and funding that it deserves?
A: The problem with Lyme is how it’s been framed for a very long time — that it’s relatively easy to diagnose and pretty straightforward to treat. But neither assertion is 100 percent correct. There’s also a general lack of awareness that it can be very, very serious. Lyme disease can be life-altering — children miss months of school, people can’t work anymore. And some people do not recover.
Q: With the official start of summer approaching and people spending more time outdoors, what tips do you have for protecting against Lyme and other tick-borne diseases?
A: If you like to go out into nature, treat your clothes, socks, and shoes with [the insecticide] permethrin. Ticks really hate it, and it can kill them. A University of Rhode Island study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology found it to be highly effective. [A CDC study published in May 2018 in the Journal of Medical Entomology also found clothing treated with permethrin had strong toxic effects on ticks.]
Be careful to avoid high grasses. If you’re hiking, stay in the middle of trails and avoid any brush at the edges. On your property, get rid of leaf piles. Ticks don’t like open, sunny areas.
After being outside, you’ve got to check yourself, your children, and even pets. The most dangerous stage of a tick’s three life stages is the nymphal stage, which is the middle one. At that point, ticks are about the size of a period, so it’s very hard to see them.
Last Updated:6/11/2018
Crazy in America: The Hidden
Tragedy of the Criminalized Mentally
Ill
Vanessa Bush
Booklist.
103.18 (May 15, 2007): p7. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of the Criminalized Mentally Ill. By Mary Beth Pfeiffer. May 2007. 336p. Carroll & Graf, paper, $15.95 (0-7867-1745-9). 362.2.
Investigative reporter Pfeiffer takes a critical look at the lack of treatment for the mentally ill that often lands them in prison, where their behavior is misinterpreted and they are vulnerable to abuse by other prisoners. Profiling six such people, Pfeiffer examines the circumstances that led to their incarceration, the inadequacy of plans upon their release, and the strains on their families. Among her subjects is Shayne, a schizophrenic who has been institutionalized since the age of 14 for mental illness and drug addiction and was jailed for a time for stabbing the local sheriff; she eventually blinds herself by plucking out her eyes. Luke, who suffers bipolar disorder, lands in a Texas prison after his behavior escalates into violence and drug abuse. Pfeiffer intersperses her reports of the facts of her subjects' lives with communications from them to their families, highlighting the growing confusion and pleas for help. Pfeiffer puts her subjects in the broader context of the nation's woeful lack of concern for treating the mentally ill.--Vanessa Bush
Bush, Vanessa
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bush, Vanessa. "Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of the Criminalized Mentally Ill."
Booklist, 15 May 2007, p. 7. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A164523397/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=8c44b3f2. Accessed 24 June 2018.
1 of 3 6/24/18, 5:04 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Gale Document Number: GALE|A164523397
QUOTED: "Pfeiffer's indignation ... create a high emotional pitch that can be exhausting, but the basic facts she sets forth are credible, and they deserve immediate attention."
2 of 3 6/24/18, 5:04 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Pfeiffer, Mary Beth: LYME
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Pfeiffer, Mary Beth LYME Island Press (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 4, 17 ISBN: 978-1-61091-844-2
An alert about the dangers of Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.
Veteran investigative reporter Pfeiffer (Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of our Criminalized Mentally Ill, 2007) lives in New York state, not far from the Connecticut town that gave its name to a bacterial infection a generation ago. Not only is there scant government research on Lyme disease, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health assert that the disease is easy to diagnose and cured with a course of antibiotics. They deny the existence of chronic Lyme disease, in which some patients experience painful joints and even heart disease or neurological problems, including cognitive declines. The agencies also inveigh against treating such patients with further courses of antibiotics. In page after page of data and interviews with patients, advocates, and researchers around the world, Pfeiffer builds a strong case: Diagnosis is not easy, many patients do not have the bull's-eye rash associated with the tick bite, and the CDC's diagnostic criteria are problematic. Worse, the prevalence of Lyme is rapidly growing worldwide. Thanks to global warming, tick species are spreading farther and finding ample numbers of small mammals to infect. The species that carry Lyme often carry other pathogens, a condition that seems to increase their vigor, while their saliva contains anti-coagulants, anesthetics, and immunosuppressive agents that enable the fiendishly small blood-suckers to hang on. Indeed, the author suggests that an anti-saliva agent might be more effective than an anti-Lyme vaccine. One difficulty with a vaccine is that the Lyme bacterium is a spirochete (like the agent for syphilis), a bug able to lie low and hide from the immune system in tissues as a persister.
Pfeiffer's indignation and constant lacing of the text with tick names and numbers, disease counts, and tragic cases create a high emotional pitch that can be exhausting, but the basic facts she sets forth are credible, and they deserve immediate attention.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Pfeiffer, Mary Beth: LYME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527247968/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=11aefdcc. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527247968
3 of 3 6/24/18, 5:04 PM4aq`R
QUOTED: "Admirably, she never succumbs to the temptation to coddle her subjects or minimize their offenses. In trying to humanize these subjects, however, Pfeiffer devotes too many pages to background information. Mixed in with the biographical detail are frequent references to mental health and prison budget figures, numbers of psychiatric beds lost versus prison cells built. ... As a result the writing sometimes comes across as an ungainly mixture of human interest-type reporting and PowerPoint slide show. Nevertheless, the book makes a lucid and devastatingly effective case."
Crazy In America: The Hidden Tragedy Of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill, by Mary Beth Pfieffer (Carroll & Graf, 2007, 280 pp. $15.95)
Loaded on May 15, 2008 by David Preston published in Prison Legal News May, 2008, page 32
Filed under: Reviews, Mental Health, Failure to Treat (Mental Illness), Suicides. Location: United States of America.
Share:
Share on G+ Share with email
Reviewed by David Preston
Imagine how tough your life would be if you were trying to cope with schizophrenia or severe depression. Plenty tough, right? Now imagine yourself, a schizophrenic, being suddenly torn from the shelter of your family, denied medication, and tossed into a punishment cell, essentially a sensory-deprivation box, for weeks, months or years at a time. Incredibly, this scenario is all too common in America, and Mary Beth Pfeiffer, in her new study, Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy Of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill, explains just how and why it happens. Pfeiffer's book recounts the life (and death) stories of six men and women whose mental illness leads them into conflict with an uncomprehending and, for the most part, uncaring legal system.
One subject, Shayne Eggen, is already a veteran of juvenile psych wards by age sixteen. As a young adult Shayne lapses into psychosis during one of her rare periods of freedom and, under the influence of a delusion, stabs a sheriff?s deputy with a steak knife. Shawn is then sentenced to two and one half years in an adult women's prison but, due to her inability to adapt to prison life, serves much of her time in punishment cells, with a predictable impact on her mental health. If the juvenile system gave Shawn little of the therapy she needed, prison gives her almost none. When her release date arrives she?s given the standard $200 and sent on her way. Shawn quickly re-offends in the throes of another delusion and is promptly returned to prison to begin the cycle again. After several incidents of self-mutilation, two suicide attempts, and more agonizing months spent in solitary confinement, Shawn is a broken human being: the victim of a penal system that?s structurally incapable of distinguishing between genuinely criminal behavior and sickness.
Although not all of Pfeiffer?s stories end with a death, the broad outlines of each case are depressingly similar. The names of the prisons change, as do the specific crimes involved. But the pattern is the same: A child is born, symptoms of illness occur in early adolescence, and a healthy mind gradually becomes unbalanced. Eventually?inevitably perhaps?an act of violence occurs. Then the police are called in, and things fall apart. From that point forward the subject is seen primarily as an offender, not an ill person, and any question of therapy takes a distant back seat to the exigencies of punishment.
Ironically, many of Pfeiffer?s subjects are self-aware enough to beg for psychiatric help from behind prison bars but, in a classic catch-22 situation, their pleas are dismissed by prison authorities as ?manipulating.? Such physicians and therapists as are available in prison often give only the most cursory?and often incorrect?diagnoses and treatment. In one case a prison medical specialist determined that a young prisoner with multiple suicide attempts was ?not a danger to himself.? The prisoner hung himself in his cell a few days later.
In fact, four of the six subjects commit suicide behind bars, primarily in reaction to being denied treatment and medication by prison staff or after being put into isolation cells. Two others die, in separate incidents, on the street within blocks of their homes, at the hands of police who, unaware that they are dealing with a mentally ill person, react to what should be no more than a public-disturbance situation with deadly force. Again, although the details differ, the pattern of confrontation and punishment?as opposed to understanding and treatment?is the same.
Unfortunately, in the America of today, medical treatment is simply not an option for many mentally ill people?especially the poor?and as community mental health budgets are cut more each year, hospital psychiatric units are downsized. Yet even as money is being squeezed out of the health care system, it?s being tossed by the bucketful at prisons by shortsighted, tough-on-crime politicians. With so many fewer hospital beds and so many more prison cells, is it any wonder that our prisons have become a dumping ground for the mentally ill?
Pfeiffer spent long hours talking with her subjects? families, as well as to police and prison officials involved in the human tragedies she describes. Admirably, she never succumbs to the temptation to coddle her subjects or minimize their offenses. In trying to humanize these subjects, however, Pfeiffer devotes too many pages to background information. Mixed in with the biographical detail are frequent references to mental health and prison budget figures, numbers of psychiatric beds lost versus prison cells built and so forth. As a result the writing sometimes comes across as an ungainly mixture of human interest-type reporting and PowerPoint slide show. Nevertheless, the book makes a lucid and devastatingly effective case for a shift in public policy towards treating mentally ill offenders, rather than simply incarcerating them.
David Preston is a freelance writer based in Seattle, Washington.
QUOTED: "This book is neither a meta-analysis nor a policy statement but an appropriate book from which to select a section, perhaps the story of Shayne, to press upon legislators and students."
Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminally Mentally Ill
Abraham Nussbaum
Published Online:1 Feb 2008https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.2.214
View Options
Tools
Share
During a decade when journalists were criticized for attending to corporate rather than community interests, Mary Beth Pfeiffer followed six men and women with severe mental illnesses as they were arrested, incarcerated, and mistreated in the American penal system. By giving account of these six people, Pfeiffer writes as an advocate journalist, providing detailed accounts of the human costs of the criminalization of people with mental illnesses.
Pfeiffer writes with an indignant but determined tone about a penal system that allows persons with mental illness to deteriorate until their death. She writes of Shayne Eggen, a woman in Iowa with schizophrenia, who gouges her own eyes out while in solitary confinement. She writes of Jessica Roger, a 21-year-old believed to have borderline personality disorder who commits suicide while locked inside a New York prison's "box." Pfeiffer invites her readers inside the enclosed and unsafe spaces into which people with mental illnesses are sent.
Although she criticizes criminal justice and mental health professionals alike, Pfeiffer hopes to indict a culture that prioritizes imprisonment over care. While describing the suicide of Joseph Maldonado—an 18-year-old in California who never receives the mental health treatment he requests—she criticizes the overcrowded prisons that keep such an inadequate watch over their charge. As she tells how Peter Nadir, a 31-year-old Floridian treated for bipolar disorder, is asphyxiated by police officers a block from his home, Pfeiffer writes about the inadequate training of police officers and the closing of mental hospitals.
To be sure, Pfeiffer offers sympathetic accounts rather than epidemiological rigor or psychological sophistication. She employs data in an uncritical fashion, but she writes for a general audience. This book is neither a meta-analysis nor a policy statement but an appropriate book from which to select a section, perhaps the story of Shayne, to press upon legislators and students. Pfeiffer clearly tells these stories with the hope that they will galvanize her readers to seek more just treatment for people with severe mental illness.
Dr. Nussbaum is a resident in psychiatry at the University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill.
Figures
References
Cited by
Details
Volume 59
Issue 2
February 2008
Pages 214
Metrics
History
Published online 1 February 2008
Published in print 1 February 2008
back
PsychiatryOnline Logo
Contact Us Alerts Subscriptions
American Psychiatric Association Publishing
Powered by Atypon Literatum
QUOTED: "Crazy in America is written in a racy journalistic style. Pfeiffer has an endless list of examples to cite in support of her arguments."
"While there may be many who identify with the stories she tells, it is to be hoped the book is read by clinicians, policy makers and planners as it is clear that there are changes necessary at many levels of the mental health and criminal justice systems."
Review - Crazy in America
The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill
by Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Carroll & Graf, 2007
Review by Tony O'Brien, RN, MPhil.
Mar 25th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 13)
In this series of six case studies, Mary Beth Pfeiffer provides a critique of mental health care in the United States, including clinical services, police, administrators and policy makers. Crazy in America recounts the experiences and fate of six individuals, selectively chosen to illustrate Pfeiffer's central arguments: that the criminal justice system is the final refuge for many people with mental illness, and that prisons are de facto asylums. More than that, Pfeiffer's argument is that prisons and police are not equal to this responsibility, and that the needs of the mentally ill are neglected as a result, leading to inhumane incarceration and sometimes death.
Over the past three decades several factors have coalesced to create the situation described in Crazy in America. These are: deinstitutionalization, a policy marked by closure of psychiatric hospitals and reductions in state funded beds; restrictive mental health legislation which in many jurisdictions limits committal to narrow dangerousness criteria; massively increased rates of criminal incarceration; withdrawal of rehabilitation and treatment programs in prisons, and increasing use of illicit drugs.
The case studies involve people such as Shayne Eggen who had many contacts with various mental health services prior to coming to the attention of the police, and others such as Joseph Maldonado whose mental health needs only came to official attention in police custody. For Jessica Roger her existing mental health problems were exacerbated by her incarceration, especially by the practice of twenty three hour a day confinement to a tiny isolation cell. The facilities Pfeiffer describes have woefully inadequate standards of mental health care, poorly trained staff and in some cases a punitive institutional attitude towards people showing signs of distress.
The overall point is that there is simply not enough of the right sorts of services available, with the result that the criminal justice system is the last resort of the state. Various social agencies, including the police, could have done more in several of these cases. Jessica Roger was transferred to a psychiatric facility many times throughout her time in prison, on each occasion with the paradoxical consequence that in a more humane environment she improved enough to be returned to prison. In prison her regime of punishment resumed, with inevitably negative consequences for her mental health. Her suicide was her own desperate way of ending this vicious cycle. As in other cases there were some alternatives that might have made a difference but staff were not disposed to take those options. Pfeiffer cites the Iowa mental health legislation as contributing to the fate of Shayne Eggen, but it is clear that even under Iowa's minimalist dangerousness criteria a case could have been made for her committal. Alan Houseman was an introverted individual with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He didn't see the police cruiser in the car park when he stopped to relieve himself. He was shot by the police officer who stopped him for questioning.
Crazy in America is written in a racy journalistic style. Pfeiffer has an endless list of examples to cite in support of her arguments. Few words are wasted in theorizing or exploring the wider background to these cases. The focus of the book is the lives of the individuals affected, and the details of what happened in each instance. Pfeiffer leaves the reader in no doubt as to her interpretations. She is forthright in her criticisms of law enforcement personnel, whether police or custodial staff, although she is not without understanding of the difficulties they face. She is skeptical of many of the official reports, especially as they typically focus on immediate events and don't consider the pattern contributing to these tragedies.
Pfeiffer rounds off the book with a commentary on the more systemic issues contributing her case studies, and with a prescription for change. Her ten-point list to keep people with mental illness out of the criminal justice system reflects many other commentators' views on this issue. It includes social interventions, policy initiatives, and improved service provision for the mentally in prison. While there may be many who identify with the stories she tells, it is to be hoped the book is read by clinicians, policy makers and planners as it is clear that there are changes necessary at many levels of the mental health and criminal justice systems.
© 2008 Tony O'Brien
Tony O'Brien, RN, MPhil., Senior Lecturer, Mental Health Nursing, University of Auckland, a.obrien@auckland.ac.nz
Comment on this review
QUOTED: "Its comprehensive look at the worldwide implications of Lyme disease fills a gaping need."
"Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change is a groundbreaking book. It should be read by anyone who cares about the health of our planet and the people who live on it."
Dorothy Kupcha Leland
TOUCHED BY LYME: Book calls epidemic “global and dangerous”
The story of Lyme disease in the modern world is maddeningly complex. To even begin to properly tell it, you need to give context about ticks, the infections they can carry, and how those diseases affect humans and animals.
You should discuss the inadequacies of “standard” lab testing and the workings of the human immune system.
And you must explore how the medical establishment “treats” Lyme disease, how legions of sick people are abandoned by the system, and the failure of health officials to properly address a developing epidemic.
And that’s just for starters.
Mary Beth Pfeiffer’s new book, Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, does a masterful job of tackling these thorny issues—and many more. Its comprehensive look at the worldwide implications of Lyme disease fills a gaping need.
Pfeiffer started covering the Lyme disease beat while she was an investigative reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal in New York state. Her award-winning series of articles published from 2012-2015 led to the creation of this book.
When she left the paper a few years ago to finish the project, she zeroed in on the subject matter even more. She interviewed physicians, patients and advocates on three continents, spoke to dozens of research scientists around the world, and read reams of research studies.
She adroitly weaves all that information together in a compelling narrative that leads to an inescapable conclusion:
“This is an epidemic. It is global and dangerous. It is spreading to new places on earth and affecting places in the human body, the brain for one, in ways that are not fully understood. History teaches us that medicine sometimes clings fiercely to convictions that are ultimately proven wrong. Lyme disease is one such time.”
Throughout the book, she documents a variety of responses and potential solutions directed at different slices of the problem. At the end, she summarizes by listing three things that must occur, if this scourge is to be controlled:
“First, the pain of tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of long-term tick-borne disease sufferers must be recognized. Why solve a problem that has barely been acknowledged?
Second, health issues must be addressed, including the need for better tests and treatment trials, and an acceptance that the problem is tick-borne disease, not only Lyme disease.
Finally, an organized, coordinated effort must be made to tackle the problem of ticks in the environment and the harm they do.”
“Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change” is a groundbreaking book. It should be read by anyone who cares about the health of our planet and the people who live on it.
****
On April 7, Mary Beth Pfeiffer will be a guest speaker at MyLymeData2018: Seeking Cures Together, a patient education conference in San Ramon, CA.
People who register for the conference by March 18 may pre-order copies of the book at a discount. The books will then be distributed at the conference, with an opportunity to have them autographed by the author. Click here for details.
(People unable to attend the conference can order a book at the discounted rate directly from the publisher by clicking here. Use the promotion code 4LYME.)
TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s VP for Communications. She is co-author of When Your Child Has Lyme Disease: A Parent’s Survival Guide. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org .