Book Review: Family Guide to Mental Illness and the Law

Image: The cover of the book is light blue with the author's name in yellow capital letters across the center top of the book, the title of the book in white capital letters in the center, and "a practical handbook" in yellow letters and at the bottom. Each set of text is separated by a thin, white, horizontal line.

Linda Tashbook's Family Guide to Mental Illness and the Law is an indispensable handbook for not only family members of people with mental illness, but anyone in any proximity to mental illness and disability- including the sufferers themselves. The book is directed at family members, but it contains such a vast amount of accessible information that I can't think of anyone who would not benefit from having it around.

While the book can certainly be read cover to cover, it is designed well as the "practical handbook" that it claims to be. Each section stands on it's own, allowing the reader to jump around and skip things that aren't currently relevant. I would say I read 60-75% of the book. I marked many sections to reread later and will likely get to the ones that weren't currently relevant when the time comes to need them. As a person who is on social security disability for multiple health conditions, someone who has dealt with family members' suicide and involuntary commitment, someone who has had prisoner pen pals with severe mental illness, and someone with a former background in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, there was a huge amount of information in this book that was relevant and educational for me. Even things I thought I was pretty well versed in, such as social security disability, offered clarifying information that filled in many gaps in my knowledge.

Tashbook's book is very well organized and uses many tools to make the information more accessible such as anecdotes, court cases, how-to guides, terminology definitions, and general step-by-step information often difficult for the public to access. The book is broken up into five major categories: Health Law, Criminal Law, Employment Law, Consumer Law, and Death and the Law. Each major category has several specific sub-sections. Do you need to know how much someone receiving social security disability income can make and how long they can work at a part time job before losing their disability benefits? Do you need help navigating life insurance claims after the suicide of a parent? Are you wondering who is responsible for housing relatives with severe mental illness? What do you do if your child with severe mental illness is arrested for loitering? Do you need to know what kind of assets of people dealing with federally qualifying mental health disabilities count against state and federal benefits? How can you make sure someone you know with mental illness or other health struggles will receive their medications while incarcerated? Tashbook has you covered on all of these fronts and more. The information is all very easy to find in the book as well, allowing you to navigate to whatever specific section you need in the moment.

My only criticism of this book is how easy Tashbook goes on the police. She has large sections dedicated to dealing with police misconduct, but often wraps things in the idea that police are well-intentioned, law-abiding citizens that exist to protect people. Disabled people make up the largest demographic of people killed by police. Approximately half of incidences of gun violence by police and 25-50% of people killed by police have mental illness. Tashbook took the time to be hard on emergency room workers, insurance providers, and so on. I believe she should have gone harder on police. I, of course, did not expect her to shout, "ACAB" from the rooftops. But, some acknowledgement of how horrific police involvement in mental illness situations often is would have been appreciated. The way the sections on police are written makes it seem as if misconduct is rare and when it occurs it is well investigated and punished. The opposite is true and studies show this. To Tashbook's credit, she does offer a lot of information on how to make reports of police misconduct from the local all the way to federal levels. I wish it was also noted that police have always existed as agents of control rather than protection. A book dealing with mental illness and the law should not make it seem like the police are generally on the side of marginalized people.

I should note that the tone of this book is generally not preachy or opinionated. So, I understand why Tashbook (and other legal writers I have read) take a cautious approach with how they discuss the police. I just hope that people don't see police as a first resort when reading these things. Overall, though, this book is extremely important and needed and thus I can forgive this one criticism. I am glad to have this on my shelf and will undoubtedly use it as a reference for years to come.

This review was also posted to goodreads.