About the Author

CAROLYN MCKINNON is a registered nurse who has worked in the mental-health-care arena for over a decade. INSANITY, INC. is the result of her commitment to arouse public awareness and conscience with regard to the extreme vulnerability of the mentally ill who are preyed upon, exploited and mistreated by profiteering "experts" who are drawn to this fruitful industry by a desire to make money.

McKinnon was appalled and outraged at the injustices that she witnessed:

Patients becoming bedfast and subsequently incontinent because there was not enough ward staff to ambulate them or take them to the bathroom

Patients having food literally shoved in their mouths because there was not sufficient staff to feed them properly

"Good", working patients being frightened out of leaving a ward when a better opportunity presented itself - and not being addressed

Absentee "experts" spending their time and energy scheming and plotting to overtake each other, (rather than interacting with patients) or writing grants supposedly to fund "programs", for which they received hundreds of thousands of unaccountable public dollars

"Programs" which were nothing more than paper exercises

"Programs" in which patients were denied "tokens" needed to purchase necessities such as food and mattresses, for not "exhibiting acceptable behavior" - "therapy" which, if implemented in a general hospital, would result in at least terminations, if not jail time

McKinnon is no longer involved in mental-health nursing. After becoming vocal at the institution where she last worked, she found herself being shunned by those in power. She was no longer invited to meetings, and her superior put the word out that she was parenoid and neurotic, when she chastised him for not bothering to address injustices that she was reporting to him. Gradually her duties were reassigned to others until she finally was relieved of all of her responsibilities. She currently is the director of a child-care center in her community.