The Center Cannot Hold
My Journey Through Madness

I have this fascination for mental health memoirs. I’ve read about a dozen or so, among them: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is brilliant, one of the essential books of my life; Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreiber; Awakenings by Oliver Sacks, this more of a multi......more

This is a memoir by a lawyer who has severe schizophrenia and talks about struggling to deal with it while getting through school and then using her unique insight into it to help others with mental illness. If anyone likes TED talks I know the author has one where she discusses it also. I enjoyed t......more

I recently visited a few high school English classes to introduce Nic Sheff's first novel, Schizo. In Schizo, the main character, a 16-year old boy, tries to learn how to live with Schizophrenia. After I explained that I felt that it was very important for us to work together to reduce the stigmas o......more

This book is written by a friend/mentor of mine at USC. It was extremely bizarre to read something so intimate by & about someone I know, so my experience of reading it will be different from the experience of others. That said, I think it's quite powerful. What Elyn is able to pull off is describin......more

Wow. This was wonderful and terrifying. But mainly it was incredibly eye-opening.......more