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, 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.