In this unique firsthand account, Hejtmanek explores the path into psychiatric custody, where American youth are institutionalized for comprehensive mental health treatment. Like other forms of state custody in the United States, psychiatric custody is home to disproportionate rates of African American boys. The ostensible goal of psychiatric custody is to transform "troubled youths" into "productive citizens" through highly structured therapeutic regimes and the internalization of new ways of being. While the young men in Hejtmanek's study face the rigidity of institutionalized life, they...