A man, clearly homeless, steps onto a New York subway train. He shakes, sways, and talks to himself, lurching around as the train moves, in the throes of a psychotic disorder. He’s someone in need of help — and for many people, though they’d never admit it publicly, a figure to fear. The perspective of the American media and the liberal journalists and writers who dominate it is that these fears are wicked, bigoted, even “bourgeois.” Efforts to explore root causes related to mental illness...