Susannah Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen. Her New York Times bestselling book “Brain on Fire” was adapted for a movie starring Chloe Grace Moretz as her. It’s an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance.
She was a healthy young person working at her dream job, The New York Post when she began having grand mal seizures and babbling. Her increasing paranoia and seizures were misdiagnosed by a neurologist as partying too hard combined with stress. Eventually, she’d become catatonic, trapped in her body unable to speak, write, or get thoughts out.
Susannah was diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder with video of her in the hospital heartbreakingly capturing her real panic as she hallucinates she’s on the news while using the remote to try to call for help. After many misdiagnoses and on the verge of being “locked up” in a psych ward, a miracle doctor, Dr. Najjar comes along and asks her to draw a clock. The lopsided image opened up clues leading to a brain biopsy and spinal tap, she’s diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, a medical explanation pretending to be psychiatric.
Her personal experience leads her deeper into the study of other “Great Pretenders,” the same name as her second New York Times best-selling book. She’d blow the lid on a groundbreaking 1973 study called “On Being Sane in Insane Places” that rocked the psychiatric world and still does. Susannah lives in Brooklyn with her husband and twin toddlers.
SHOW NOTE LINKS:
Video of Susannah When Her Brain is On Fire
Rachel’s List- Fourteen Incredible Memoirs about Mental Illness and Addiction
Rachel’s List- Four MORE Insightful Memoirs and Non-Fiction Books about Mental Illness and Addiction
The Angel and the Assassin by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying: Essays by Bassey Ikpi
My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel
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