Tomorrow Was Yesterday (subtitled “Explosive First-Person Indictments of the US Mental Health System— Mothers Across the Nation Tell It Like It Is”) is the second of two essential books produced by the fiercely eloquent Dede Moon Ranahan since her son Pat died in July 2014, in a hospital psychiatric ward. It follows on the heels of Sooner Than Tomorrow: A Mother’s Diary About Mental Illness, Family, and Everyday Life, which appeared in April 2019, and was written while Pat was still living, and no one foresaw his imminent death.
Her first book reached out to mothers of afflicted and lost children, making common cause with their plight and her own. (And why is it, I ask again, that mothers seem always to be the point-parents in dialogues about m.i.? Where are the fathers?!) This second work is even more ambitious. It’s a compendium of stories that Ms. Ranahan has exhaustively retrieved from mothers in similar straits. It brings to mind the protean books of Studs Terkel more than a generation ago. Ms. Ranahan writes that she chose this interview-and-transcribe approach in lieu of “an extended rant,” and she has been forthright about the psychic weariness this journey has cost her. If you are lucky enough not to have lived in this horrific “sub-nation,” with its attendant catastrophes of diagnosis, effective treatment, ruinous healthcare costs, courtroom and criminal justice, effective political leadership, and awareness in the culture at large, please read Ms. Ranahan. And then get busy. You could help change the world. And DeDe Ranahan is now enshrined in the literature of enlightenment.
The second reason for fresh hope is a new call to arms by Thomas Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and a figure known as “the nation’s psychiatrist.” It is titled Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health.
In the tradition of the late D.J. Jaffe, but with a psychiatrist’s grounding in nosology and a journalist’s zeal for social and civic truths, Insel explores the strange disconnect between stunning advances in the understanding of why and how the human brain can run amok, and the infuriating stagnation of actual reclamation for the mentally ill. He writes with laser-like clarity and the assurance of a master in his field.
I can’t recommend this book with any more persuasion than that of the great advocate Pete Earley, who writes on the back cover:
“’Healing’ is truly one of the best books ever written about mental illness, and I think I’ve read them all. Dr. Insel speaks as a parent, scientist, doctor . . . defining what’s wrong and offering clear-headed solutions—all the while guiding us forward with compassion, goodness, and hope in this juggernaut wake-up call.”
“ . . . and hope.” Yes.