'The Best Minds' examines mental illness and deinstitutionalization - review

• Published date: 29 March 2024
• Author: HOWARD BLAS
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions is Rosen's latest and longest book (by far), which reportedly took 10 years of time, research, and emotional energy to write. It is part memoir, part history of mental health and mental illness, and part psychology text. Rosen and Laudor went on to graduate from Yale. Rosen then completed coursework toward a PhD in literature at University of California, Berkeley; married a rabbi; had two children; and began to write and edit for such publications as The New York Times and The Forward. He has written five books so far – two novels and three nonfiction books

Laudor, the more naturally gifted of the two, graduated Yale summa cum laude within three years. Subsequently, he worked for a year in a high-pressured job in management consulting at the prestigious firm of Bain and Company.His life then took an unexpected turn when he began to experience auditory hallucinations and paranoia.Laudor was hospitalized for eight months in a locked ward at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Following a stint in a halfway house where it was suggested that he might ease back into life by working as a clerk at Macy's department store, he surprisingly decided to attend Yale Law School.Thanks to the support and kindness of professors, deans, and fellow students, Laudor managed to graduate, although he wasn't able to secure employment as a lawyer in a firm. He did, however, achieve notoriety and an extremely highly paid book and movie deal when his story was featured in a 1995 New York Times article titled "A Voyage to Bedlam and Partway Back: Yale Law Graduate, a Schizophrenic, Is Encumbered by an Invisible Wheelchair."

Laudor ultimately had difficulty making progress on the book and eventually went off his medication and experienced worsening symptoms of psychosis and paranoia.

In 1998, Laudor killed his live-in girlfriend and future wife, who, the reader painfully learns, was pregnant with their first child. Laudor was ultimately found not responsible for the killing "by reason of mental disease or defect" (also known as "not guilty by reason of insanity"). He has spent the last 25 years at the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center, a secure psychiatric facility 55 miles northwest of New York City, where Rosen has visited him on several occasions.

The Best Minds represents Rosen's attempt to examine their unremarkable suburban New York childhoods, their...