This week on the Mad in America podcast, we are joined by Sarah Fay. Sarah is an author, an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, a freelance writer at The New York Times and elsewhere, a certified mental health peer recovery support specialist, and a mental health keynote speaker who’s spoken to audiences across the country about recovery from mental illness.

We have previously spoken with Sarah about her book, Pathological: A True Story of Six Misdiagnoses, which told the story of her twenty-five years spent in the mental health system.

For her follow-up work, Cured: A Memoir, Sarah writes about her recovery from mental illness. She says, “During the twenty-five years I spent in the mental health system, not one clinician mentioned the word recovery. I ended up one of those “hopeless” cases—diagnosed with bipolar disorder, chronically suicidal, and unable to live independently. Yet I recovered. Not remission. Full recovery.”

In this interview, we discuss why "cured" is such a seldom-used word in psychiatry. We talk about the power of finding hope, the peer recovery movement, and much more.

***

Mad in America podcasts and reports are made possible, in part, by a grant from the Thomas Jobe Fund.

Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow.

To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here