Dartmouth Events

Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Madness and Inequality in Los Angeles"

This book compares public safety net and elite private psychiatric treatment in Los Angeles to show how inequality shapes the very meanings of mental illness, recovery, client choice, and personhood. In Downtown LA, the crises of homelessness and criminalization means public safety net providers define recovery as getting a client housed, not in jail, and not triggering emergency calls. Given insufficient treatment capacity, providers eschew discipline for a “tolerant containment” model that accepts medication refusal and drug use so long as deviant behavior remains indoors. For elite private providers serving wealthy families, on the other hand, recovery means normalization and generating a respectable identity. Far from accepting madness and addiction, providers use a “concerted constraint” model to therapeutically discipline wayward adult children. Turning theoretical expectation on its head, I show how "freedom" becomes an inferior good and disciplinary power a form of privilege. 

https://dartmouth.zoom.us/j/99637959952?pwd=UVFkTXlObkNHczVFRHpmb1hkSUQ1dz09