The ambivalent paradoxical view held by clients and others regarding the crazy self and the chronic sick role in american culture has been articulated in the past perhaps first by parsons 1972 in parsons perceptive scheme the balance of rewards between the legitimized dependency arid lowered expectations of being ill and the motivations and obligations to return to healthy effective . Estroff describes a group of chronic psychiatric clients as they attempt life outside a mental hospital. This book explores the psychological social and economic facts of life for a group of discharged mental hospital patients living in madison wisconsin it both explicitly and inferentially raises questions about the rationale for deinstitutionalization an anthropological field study the work is the product of two years of intensive observation. Start by marking making it crazy an ethnography of psychiatric clients in an american community as want to read making it crazy an ethnography of psychiatric clients in an american community by sue e estroff 373 rating details 30 ratings 4 reviews estroff describes a group of chronic psychiatric clients as they attempt life outside a mental hospital get a copy . Making it crazy an ethnography of psychiatric clients in an american community making it crazy an ethnography of psychiatric clients in an american community sue e estroff med psiquiatria author sue e estroff publisher university of california press 1985 isbn 0520907752 9780520907751 length 338 pages subjects