With scores of Americans now dealing with similar severe mental illnesses yet facing potentially catastrophic cuts to their health care coverage, Powers talked with Salon about the pervasive attitude encapsulated in his book's title.

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His book arose, as Powers recalled in a recent episode of "Salon Talks," out of a 2010 newspaper investigation of the Milwaukee County Hospital's psychiatric wing. "It was in shambles," Power said. "People were being raped. People were starving; people were running around naked." The county's apparent response was "not to clear up the problem and rescue these helpless people, but to insulate" from scrutiny the official in charge, Scott Walker, who now serves as Wisconsin's governor. One of his staffers responded to a colleague by email that "no one cares about crazy people," Powerssaid.

"That quote goes to the heart of the cavalier way that many people, and I'm afraid most public officials, deal with the problem of serious mental illness," Power declared.

"The world went red," when he spotted that sentence on his computer screen, Powers recalled, calling the very thought "a violation."

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But when he came to his senses, he told himself, "There's my title." And he deemed it "the necessary irritant for plunging ahead in this arduous process of trying to explain what mental illness is, and to open up my own family's travails."

Watch the Salon video to see how a father and prolific journalist reflects on the topic of mental illness.