Program Description
Event Details
UCSD Sociology Professor Neil Gong presents his new book, Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics at a free, open to the public book launch at the San Diego Central Library @ Joan Λ Irwin Jacobs Common. In the book Gong traces the divide between the haves and have-nots in the psychiatric treatment systems that shape the trajectories of people living with serious mental illness. After the presentation there will be an audience Q&A and a book signing. To reserve a copy of the book in advance click here. Proceeds support the San Diego Public Library System.
About the Book:
In 2022, Los Angeles became the US county with the largest population of unhoused people, drawing a stark contrast with the wealth on display in its opulent neighborhoods. In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics, sociologist Neil Gong traces the divide between the haves and have-nots in the psychiatric treatment systems that shape the trajectories of people living with serious mental illness. In Downtown Los Angeles, many people in psychiatric crisis only receive help after experiencing homelessness or arrests. Public providers engage in guerrilla social work to secure them housing and safety, but these programs are rarely able to deliver true rehabilitation for psychological distress and addiction. Patients are free to refuse treatment or use illegal drugs—so long as they do so away from public view. Across town in West LA or Malibu, wealthy people diagnosed with serious mental illness attend luxurious treatment centers. Programs may offer yoga and organic meals alongside personalized therapeutic treatments, but patients can feel trapped, as their families pay exorbitantly to surveil and “fix” them. Meanwhile, middle-class families—stymied by private insurers, unable to afford elite providers, and yet not poor enough to qualify for social services—struggle to find care at all. Examining this divergent treatment of people facing similar mental struggles, Gong’s findings raise uncomfortable questions about urban policy, family dynamics, and what it means to respect individual freedom. At a time when many voters merely want streets cleared of “problem people,” Gong’s book helps us imagine a fundamentally different psychiatric system—one that will meet the needs of patients, families, and society at large.
About the Author:
Neil Gong is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is coeditor, with Corey Abramson, of Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.