Rita Moreno narrates the story of a small group of middle-class parents who, in the 1970s, got sick and tired of being blamed for causing their children’s schizophrenia. They built a grassroots movement and launched a multi-pronged rebellion.

    When Medicine Got it Wrong opens a hidden chapter of recent American history, one where parents declared “Yes We Can” and took on doctors, politicians and the cultural fear surrounding schizophrenia. Their battles played out amid the life-and-death consequences of medical misunderstanding – from the assassination attempt on President Reagan to rampant homelessness and incarceration for those not receiving treatment.

    This family movement helped shape dramatic advances in brain research and an explosion of neuroscientific discoveries. By the 1990s the term “schizophrenogenic” mother disappeared from textbooks for good. Medicine now knows that people with schizophrenia can live fulfilling lives as long as good treatment, medications and services are in place.

    The story is as much a human rights saga as a medical one, revealing one of the last acceptable prejudices in America: denying people with severe mental illnesses adequate care and treatment. 'Imagine if half the people with Alzheimer's disease were living on the streets or in jail: people would be outraged,' says one of the world's leading schizophrenia researchers. 'But that's the situation today for people with schizophrenia.' Where is the outrage?