The intersection of America’s criminal justice system and mental health is long and, often, misunderstood.  Christine Montross tells us that America’s largest mental health institution isn’t a psychiatric hospital, it’s Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Christine Montross is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.  She is also a practicing inpatient psychiatrist and performs forensic psychiatric examinations.  She completed medical school and residency training at Brown University, where she received the Isaac Ray Award in Psychiatry and the Martin B. Keller Outstanding Brown Psychiatry Resident Award.  She received her undergraduate degrees and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Michigan.  Montross’s first book, “Body of Work,” was named an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times and one of The Washington Post’s best nonfiction books of 2007.  Her second book, “Falling Into the Fire,” was named a New Yorker “Book to Watch Out For.”  Her latest book, “Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration,” was named a New York Times Book to Watch For, a Time Magazine Book to Read in July and an Amazon.com Best Book of the Month. She has also written for many national publications including The New York Times, The New England Journal of Medicine, Time Magazine, The Washington Post Book World, Good Housekeeping and O, The Oprah Magazine.

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