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Joe Sharkey
Joseph Michael Sharkey (October 15, 1946 – November 6, 2023) was an American author and columnist. His columns focused mostly on business travel, while his non-fiction books focused on criminality; he also co-authored a novel. He wrote for The New York Times from 1996 to 2015. Before then, he was an Assistant National Editor for The Wall Street Journal, the City Editor for the Albany Times-Union, and a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Joseph Michael Sharkey was born in Philadelphia on October 15, 1946. He enrolled at Pennsylvania State University, but did not graduate, and instead joined the U.S. Navy. While there, he wrote for the Navy News Service during the Vietnam War.
Sharkey was married to Carolynne White; they had three children and divorced in 1982. Three years later, he married editor Nancy J. Albaugh.
On November 6, 2023, Sharkey died from a stroke, caused by hypertension, at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He was 77.
Sharkey's 1994 book Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy is an investigation of the psychiatric industry. Focusing on sensational cases in the United States, Sharkey exposed how powerful elements within the industry maneuvered to exploit new markets when health insurance providers began covering costs for in-hospital mental health treatment. He traced soaring mental health costs to the often criminal marketing practices of biological psychiatry, which Sharkey asserted began when the number of psychiatric hospitals boomed in the late 1980s. He provided anecdotal tales of people coerced into treatment on fabricated pretenses, and compared schemes to fill beds at for-profit mental and addiction facilities, which were offering bounties to clergy, teachers, police and "crisis counselors," to the business plan of the Holiday Inn hotel chain.[citation needed]
The psychiatric industry, warned Sharkey — whose late father-in-law was a respected psychiatrist involved in setting up non-profit mental health clinics during the 1980s in New York state and whose daughter is a researcher, professor, and licensed clinical social worker — has been lobbying legislatures for an increasing share of government health spending. Despite such warnings by Sharkey and mental health watchdogs, similar practices have continued to evolve in Texas (where many of the events depicted in Bedlam took place), in the form of the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, and at the federal level with the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.[citation needed]
Another of Sharkey's books is Above Suspicion, the nonfiction story of FBI agent Mark Putnam, who murdered his mistress in an eastern Kentucky mining town. In the book, Sharkey implicitly condemned the FBI for encouraging the use of paid informants. A movie adaptation called Above Suspicion, starring Emilia Clarke and Jack Huston and directed by Phillip Noyce, was released in 2019.
Sharkey's book, Deadly Greed, which has been optioned for a feature film, explored the sensational 1989 Boston killing, in which Charles Stuart fatally shot his pregnant wife Carol and caused racial tensions by accusing a black man of the crime.
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Joe Sharkey
Joseph Michael Sharkey (October 15, 1946 – November 6, 2023) was an American author and columnist. His columns focused mostly on business travel, while his non-fiction books focused on criminality; he also co-authored a novel. He wrote for The New York Times from 1996 to 2015. Before then, he was an Assistant National Editor for The Wall Street Journal, the City Editor for the Albany Times-Union, and a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Joseph Michael Sharkey was born in Philadelphia on October 15, 1946. He enrolled at Pennsylvania State University, but did not graduate, and instead joined the U.S. Navy. While there, he wrote for the Navy News Service during the Vietnam War.
Sharkey was married to Carolynne White; they had three children and divorced in 1982. Three years later, he married editor Nancy J. Albaugh.
On November 6, 2023, Sharkey died from a stroke, caused by hypertension, at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He was 77.
Sharkey's 1994 book Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy is an investigation of the psychiatric industry. Focusing on sensational cases in the United States, Sharkey exposed how powerful elements within the industry maneuvered to exploit new markets when health insurance providers began covering costs for in-hospital mental health treatment. He traced soaring mental health costs to the often criminal marketing practices of biological psychiatry, which Sharkey asserted began when the number of psychiatric hospitals boomed in the late 1980s. He provided anecdotal tales of people coerced into treatment on fabricated pretenses, and compared schemes to fill beds at for-profit mental and addiction facilities, which were offering bounties to clergy, teachers, police and "crisis counselors," to the business plan of the Holiday Inn hotel chain.[citation needed]
The psychiatric industry, warned Sharkey — whose late father-in-law was a respected psychiatrist involved in setting up non-profit mental health clinics during the 1980s in New York state and whose daughter is a researcher, professor, and licensed clinical social worker — has been lobbying legislatures for an increasing share of government health spending. Despite such warnings by Sharkey and mental health watchdogs, similar practices have continued to evolve in Texas (where many of the events depicted in Bedlam took place), in the form of the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, and at the federal level with the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.[citation needed]
Another of Sharkey's books is Above Suspicion, the nonfiction story of FBI agent Mark Putnam, who murdered his mistress in an eastern Kentucky mining town. In the book, Sharkey implicitly condemned the FBI for encouraging the use of paid informants. A movie adaptation called Above Suspicion, starring Emilia Clarke and Jack Huston and directed by Phillip Noyce, was released in 2019.
Sharkey's book, Deadly Greed, which has been optioned for a feature film, explored the sensational 1989 Boston killing, in which Charles Stuart fatally shot his pregnant wife Carol and caused racial tensions by accusing a black man of the crime.