[1] Sharkey's 1994 book Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy is an investigation of the psychiatric industry.
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.
[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.
[1] 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.
Joe Sharkey was one of seven people aboard an Embraer Legacy business jet that collided in mid-air with a Gol Airlines Boeing 737 over Brazil, on September 29, 2006.
The business jet, despite sustaining damage to its wing and tail, managed to land safely at Cachimbo military airport, while the Boeing crashed to the ground, killing all 154 people on board.
In a New York Times front-page article titled "Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living", published October 3, 2006, Sharkey reported:[2] And it had been a nice ride.
Minutes later came the strike (it sheared off part of the plane’s tail, too, we later learned).During an interview with NBC's Today Show on October 5, 2006, Sharkey said he was relaxing in his cabin seat with the window shade down when he was jolted by a bang.
The widow of one of the victims claimed the article (in which Sharkey blamed the crash on incapable air operators) defamed the Brazilian people and consequently her personal dignity.