Pete Earley's 23-year old son Mike was having a psychotic episode as they raced down Interstate 95 headed to Fairfax, Va.

One minute, Mike was talking about Satan, God and capitalism; the next moment he was crying.

A best-selling author and former Washington Post reporter, Earley begins his latest book this way, plunging the reader into the anguish a parent experiences when his or her child suffers a mental breakdown.

On Tuesday, Earley will speak in Salem about his book, "Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness," at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Roanoke Valley's annual dinner. His speech is one of about 40 he is doing this year and will closely follow his book, which examines how the mentally ill are being criminalized and how America's health system is failing them.

Earley's book tells two stories. The first is Mike's and the second is what he saw during a one-year investigation of the mentally ill in the Miami-Dade County jail in Florida. "It was really hard for me not to see my son in their situations," Earley said. "I knew that could happen to him and that was what was driving me, but also terrifying."

When Earley arrived at a hospital in Fairfax, his son refused treatment. Despite Earley's pleas, the doctor refused to treat Mike against his will. In the book, Earley recounted how the doctor said, "Virginia law is very specific. Unless a patient is in imminent danger to himself or others, I cannot treat him unless he voluntarily agrees to be treated."

Less than 48 hours later, Mike was delusional and broke into a home to take a bubble bath. He was arrested and charged with two felony crimes. Only after breaking the law was Mike given treatment.

"What was wrong with the law? This was insanity!" Earley wrote in the book.

He began to dig around. He soon discovered that what happened to Mike was part of a larger story. He said jails and prisons had become America's new asylums.

Sixteen percent of the U.S. prison population is mentally ill, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Earley examined the reasons for this phenomenon: a lack of community services, commitment laws that protect a person's right to deny treatment, the closing of hospital beds and deinstitutionalization, the massive closing of state mental hospitals during the '70s and '80s.

"The answer is not locking people up because they are sick," Earley said.

"Crazy" has proven the most difficult book for Earley to write. It is also his second best-selling book following "The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison," which was published in 1992.

Earley joined NAMI after his son's breakdown, explaining it was for his own sanity. "It's really turned me into an advocate," he added.

Both NAMI Roanoke Valley President Phyllis Scruggs and board member June Poe are looking forward to his speech. Poe's 51-year-old son John suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was imprisoned after breaking into her house. "It's the worst thing that can happen to someone who is mentally ill," she said about imprisonment.

Earley understands.

"I'm not unique. When I do one of these things [speeches], there are parents who say my son is in jail, my son just got out, my son killed himself before he got help," Earley said. "When it happens to you, it changes things."