Books like Mad in America — picked by fans

Instead of starting with the question, "How can I change my child's behavior?" Andrew Solomon starts by asking, "How does my child experience the world?"

He tells the stories of parents who have struggled to accept that their children are profoundly different from them and offers a deeply optimistic view of relationships and family. This book takes a fascinating dive into different ways of being human – among them, deafness, dwarfism, transgenderism, autism – and inspires us to look at our children through new eyes.

Robert Kolker's book tells the unforgettable story of the Galvin’s, a Colorado family with twelve children—six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Through meticulous reporting and sensitive interviews with two of the daughters, Kolker weaves together the family's history with the evolving science of schizophrenia research.

The book reveals the heartbreaking toll mental illness takes on individuals and families while offering hope through scientific advancements. It is both a family saga and a medical mystery, painting a profound portrait of violence, love, loss, and resilience in the face of unimaginable challenges. Kolker’s book underlined that mental illness is a combination of genetic heritability and environment.

Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Ron Powers’s book offers a scorching indictment of the American mental health system, interwoven with the heartbreaking story of his two sons as they battle schizophrenia. Powers traces the historical neglect, the shame, the misinformation and mistreatment of people with mental illness while offering a deeply personal perspective on the impact such conditions have on families.

Passionate, informative, and empathetic, this book sheds light on the urgent need for mental health reform and societal compassion. I ached for Ron Powers and his need to shed light on a subject that pushes people to the margins of society.

When I began my book, I wanted to know who my mother was at 22, when she left a brief disaster of a first marriage with an infant—my brother, Mike. Mom grew up in Montana, embedded in immigrant Jewish life. My great-uncle, Myron Brinig, wrote about that life and our family in Singermann, his first book (now, alas, an obscure classic available mostly in libraries). In early drafts of my book, I included far too much family history, with Myron as my guide. I loved the detail; my early readers did not. So my published book stays close to the core emotional story. And yet Singermann opens a window not just on our family but others with complicated immigration stories, dark secrets, and intergenerational mental illness.

A harrowing and beautiful tale of two sisters growing up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother. The author describes a fine line between gentle artistic creativity and debilitating mental illness. The reader will come away with a better understanding of how deeply children are affected growing up in a dysfunctional and traumatic environment. A mother's love and a journey to forgiveness teach us the complex meaning of love.

The abuse of power is a running theme in the history of psychiatry. Psychiatry has often been wielded to control those who challenge the status quo. This book neatly and creatively unearths one such attempt to stifle dissent by labeling it mad.

Focusing on a mental hospital in Michigan, Jonathan Metzl shows how schizophrenia was harnessed to pathologize Black Civil Rights activism in the 1960s. In the process, schizophrenia was transformed from a condition mainly diagnosed in whites to one that stressed violence and aggression and was mainly diagnosed in black males. I especially love how Metzl punctuates his historical analysis with poignant stories of individuals caught up in this dark period of racism in psychiatry. 

I first read this book in 1987, when I was a fourth-year medical student. This is the book that really sparked my interest in psychiatry.

It opened my eyes to the possibility that even those in the most disturbed state of mind experience meaningful and understandable human dilemmas. It’s as fresh and relevant today as it was when it was first published six decades ago. A deeply humane text that humanizes the most disenfranchised and lost of our human family.

There are lots of graphic novels and memoirs with medical themes, but I want to shine a light on this unique collaboration by brothers who capture their shared experience of schizophrenia, one diagnosed with the condition and the other who accompanies him through difficult navigation of an inadequate health care system and the struggle of managing a disease that isolates individuals and families from their communities.

Each brother works side-by-side to tell their interrelated stories: Olivier is a visual artist, and Clem is an author and playwright. Olivier’s drawings are on the verso, in simple black and white sketches, often unframed, of family holidays, from picnics to Christmas, with obscuring smudges, stiff figures, and unsmiling faces that belie the sun, picnic baskets, and decorated trees of the settings.  He draws his world of meetings with doctors, attending group meetings, and struggling to get and hold jobs.

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“What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?” asks Will Hall, the host of Madness Radio. Hall is one of the most gifted media hosts whom I have ever been interviewed by, as he is especially talented in drawing out his subjects. Hall is unique in that he is also a therapist who was once diagnosed with schizophrenia. Outside Mental Health is a collection of his interviews with more than 60 scientists, journalists, doctors, activist ex-psychiatric patients, and artists who provide alternative visions to psychiatry’s medical model—a paradigm that has been nonproductive and counterproductive for many people.

The heart of this book is the stories of individuals with serious mental illness based on repeated interviews over the course of years, which illustrate the dysfunction of our mental health system.

These stories are woven together with interviews of experts, research, and the author’s experiences living with a sister who had schizophrenia. I learned as much from this book as any other single book I have read in the field.