Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Neil Gong is an assistant professor of sociology at UC San Diego, where he researches psychiatric services, homelessness,

and how communities seek to maintain social order.

Neal's new book, Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics, Mental Illness and Homelessness

in Los Angeles, was published by the University of Chicago Press.

He offers a detailed look into the starkly different worlds of mental health care in L.A.

He contrasts the public safety net clinics, which strive to keep patients housed and out of jail,

with the elite private care centers that cater to the wealthy.

His findings reveal a stark and troubling divide.

While the public system focuses on survival and containment, often providing only minimal care,

the private system aims at rehabilitation and respectability, albeit sometimes at the cost of personal freedom.

Neal's extensive field work for this book included spending nights in homeless encampments, shadowing social workers,

and engaging with patients and families across

the socioeconomic spectrum. His work highlights systemic failures and societal indifference,

but also the humanity of those working and living within these disparate treatment systems.

So thanks for coming on the Mad America podcast, Neil.

Thanks for having me. I've been a long time listener and reader.

We're excited to have you here. To get started, can you just share with our listeners a little bit more about

your story, who you are, and how you got interested in focusing on mental health, homelessness,

and the disparities in psychiatric care? I had for a long time thought I was going to be

some sort of mental health practitioner,

perhaps a clinical psychologist, in part because of things I'd seen family members and friends

...