Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness

As case management has replaced institutional care for mental health patients in recent decades, case management theory has grown in complexity and variety of models. But how are these models translated into real experience? How do caseworkers use both textbook and practical knowledge to assist clients with managing their medication and their money? Using ethnographic and historical-sociological methods, Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness uncovers unexpected differences between written and oral accounts of case management in practice. In the process, it suggests the possibility of small acts of resistance and challenges the myth of social workers as agents of state power and social control.

Jerry E. Floersch is an assistant professor at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.