About the Book
One family’s harrowing journey through America’s broken mental health care system.
When Frank Morain suffered a devastating brain injury after a late-night car crash in 1969, his life, and the lives of those who loved him, changed forever. In an instant, his family became his caretakers and advocates.
Frank’s brother, veteran journalist Dan Morain, takes readers inside his family’s decades-long struggle to navigate the increasingly dysfunctional and crumbling mental health care system. Framing his narrative around Frank’s story, Morain examines the rise and decline of mental health care in postwar America and the political decisions that helped create today’s mental health crisis. The book blends memoir, history, and investigative journalism to reveal how leaders from both parties dismantled systems of care, creating one of the most consequential public policy failures in modern American history. Clear-eyed about the human costs of that failure, Morain also points toward practical solutions for rebuilding a system that better serves individuals, families, and communities.