Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American incarceration.
It “is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones,” said a review in goodreads.com.
Galvanized by her work in US jails, psychiatrist Christine Montross illuminates the human cost of mass incarceration and mental illness.
Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients.
Several years ago, she set out to investigate why so many of her patients got caught up in the legal system when discharged from her care — and what happened to them therein.
Montross is a gifted, often compelling storyteller.
“The stark world of American prisons is shocking for all who enter. But Montross’ expertise — the mind in crisis — allowed her to reckon with the human stories behind the bars,” said the review.
“The distinction I once imagined between hospital and prison populations exists only faintly,” Montross reflected, “when it exists at all.”
