Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics

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In 2022, Los Angeles became the US city with the largest population of unhoused people, a stark contrast with the city's luxurious hillside mansions. This book from sociologist Neil Gong traces the divide between the haves and have nots by looking to mental health treatment, a key factor in what kind of life a person can live. As Gong shows, the mental health options available to the wealthy versus the poor affects not only the resources they can access, but their very personhood. The Downtown Skid Row area is infamous as "America's homeless capital"-a dumping ground for people with mental illness, ex-prisoners, and addicts. For people diagnosed with mental illness who get caught in the social safety net, often through arrests, the state will largely offer a slate of outpatient tactics. Caseworkers visit individuals regularly to help them with the necessities of functioning independently, such as obtaining identification and shopping for groceries. These services often keep mentally ill people housed, fed, and hopefully out of prison, but they rarely offer treatment for people in psychological distress. They are free but not treated. Across town in West LA or the beach cities, wealthy people diagnosed with serious mental illness attend luxurious treatment centers, from outpatient day clinics to residential programs by the ocean. Programs may offer yoga, holistic care, and farm-to-table organic meals alongside therapeutic treatments and university-affiliated psychiatrists. These treatments aim for psychological wellness, of course, but they also aim to stabilize people's lives, often through programs that greatly limit choice and mobility-families of the wealthy mentally ill expect that their loved ones will be contained. They are treated but not free. Throughout, Gong shows us starkly different ways of understanding people in psychic distress, and divergent ideas and pathways of recovery that may make them into separate kinds of people. At its core, this book project is about the way social context shapes problems and attempts to solve them. The book moves beyond psychiatric care to address issues of urban policy, family dynamics, and, ultimately, the meaning of freedom and personhood in contemporary America"--