Author Description

This is my story about my experience with deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill - the movement of the severely and persistently mentally ill from the State and County Psychiatric Hospitals into the cities and towns in New Jersey. It’s about my involvement with the Residential Health Care Facilities and Class C Boarding Homes in the communities into which a great number of people with severe and persistent mental illness came to live upon discharge from the State and County Psychiatric Hospitals. It’s about these individuals, diagnosed Schizophrenics with this terrible debilitating illness, who I have known. It’s about how they lived in this environment and what they thought and felt. It’s about my personal experience with State government and State Agencies charged with regulating these homes and the consequence of their actions on the welfare of this vulnerable population. And lastly, but of no less importance, it’s about my reputation. Through the medium of this book, I attempted to show the impact of government involvement on these people and, in particular, on me personally.