'Mad in America': Symposium at Holy Cross to Examine Mental Illness

WORCESTER, Mass. – The College of the Holy Cross will host an event titled, “Mad in America: Finding Sanity in a Crazy World” on Thursday, Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. in the Levis Browsing Room in Dinand Library. Guest speakers include Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2001) and Oryx Cohen, director of Western Mass. Recovery Learning Community and co-founder of Freedom Center. The symposium is sponsored by the departments of psychology and sociology and anthropology and the Natural World Cluster of the Montserrat Program.

Whitaker will speak about his research on the history and politics of the treatment of the chronically mentally ill in the U.S. and Cohen will speak more personally about peer-run approaches to treating mental illness.

Before authoring three books, Whitaker served as the science and medical reporter at the Albany Times Union newspaper in New York. He won several national awards for his journalism, including a George Polk award for medical writing, and a National Association of Science Writers’ award for best magazine article. In 1998, a series he co-wrote for The Boston Globe was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Whitaker’s books have also received accolades. Mad in America was named one of the best science books of 2002 by Discover magazine. The American Library Association named his second book, The Mapmaker’s Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder and Survival in the Amazon, one of the best biographies of 2004. He has also penned On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice that Remade a Nation (2008) and he’s currently working on Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, scheduled to be published in 2010.

Oryx Cohen is a leader in the international consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) movement. As the co-director of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, he has helped to spearhead an innovative peer-run approach. Cohen also serves as a co-founder of Freedom Center, the Pioneer Valley’s only independent peer-run organization that empowers people with psychiatric labels and challenges oppressive mental health policies and practices.

Cohen serves on several boards and committees internationally, nationally, and regionally, including the International Network Toward Alternatives for Recovery (INTAR). As a volunteer with Mind Freedom International, Cohen has directed its Oral History Project, which involves collecting and documenting c/s/x stories of abuse, empowerment, and healing in the mental health system. Currently, he also serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Westfield State College psychology department.