Elyn Saks

Elyn Saks
File:ELYN SAKS 9.JPG
Nationality	American
Institutions	University of Bridgeport School of Law, University of Southern California Law School
Alma mater	Vanderbilt University, Oxford University, Yale Law School, New Center for Psychoanalysis
Notable awards	MacArthur Fellow

Elyn R. Saks is Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School, an expert in mental health law and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner. Saks lives with schizophrenia and has written about her experience with the illness in her award-winning best-selling autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold, published by Hyperion Books in 2007. Saks is also a cancer survivor.

Academic background

Saks was an attorney in Connecticut and instructor at the University of Bridgeport School of Law before joining the USC Law faculty in 1989. She graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University before earning her master of letters from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she also edited the Yale Law Journal. She holds a Ph.D. in psychoanalytic science from the New Center for Psychoanalysis. Saks is a member of Phi Beta Kappa; an affiliate member of the American Psychoanalytic Association; a board member of Mental Health Advocacy Services; and a member of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Foundation, Robert J. Stoller Foundation, and American Law Institute. Prof. Saks won both the Associate’s Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship and the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award in 2004.

Mental illness research

Saks experienced her first symptoms of mental illness at eight years old, but she had her first full-blown episode when a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University. Another breakdown happened while a student at Yale Law School, after which she "ended up forcibly restrained and forced to take anti-psychotic medication".

Saks lives with schizophrenia and has written about her experience with the illness in her award-winning best-selling autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness published by Hyperion Books in 2007. Saks is also a cancer survivor. She emphasizes that "illness of any kind need not define an individual, while remarking on the different ways that mental and physical illnesses are regarded".

Saks says "there's a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life." In recent years, researchers have begun talking about mental health care in the same way addiction specialists speak of recovery — the lifelong journey of self-treatment and discipline that guides substance abuse programs. The idea remains controversial: managing a severe mental illness is more complicated than simply avoiding certain behaviors. Approaches include "medication (usually), therapy (often), a measure of good luck (always) — and, most of all, the inner strength to manage one's demons, if not banish them". That strength can come from any number of places, these former patients say: love, forgiveness, faith in God, a lifelong friendship. Saks says "we who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources."

Saks has spoken of the Mental Health America Village in Long Beach that provides best practice integrated services, giving all the needed services and support in one venue. She has also said that her former psychotherapist in England does many home visits, saving the cost of hospitalisation.

On several occasions Saks has spoken to American Psychiatric Association members about being a successful professional who has had severe mental illness and her perspective on psychiatric care. In June 2012, Saks gave a TED talk advocating for compassion toward people with mental illness.

Saks has been researching high-functioning people with schizophrenia in Los Angeles, who suffer from "mild delusions or hallucinatory behavior". They are successful technicians, and medical, legal and business professionals. Many are studying toward college or graduate degrees.

Awards

Saks in 2009 was selected as a MacArthur Foundation fellow, receiving a $500,000 "genius grant". Saks used the money to establish the Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics, which highlights one important mental health issue per academic year and is a collaborative effort between seven USC departments. Saks has had a hospital ward named after her -- "The Elyn Saks Ward"—at Pelham Woods Hospital in Dorking, England. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Works

Saks writes mainly on legal issues and mental health, and has published four books:

• The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, ISBN 978-1-4013-0138-5
• Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill, ISBN 978-0-226-73397-5
• Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis, ISBN 978-0-300-07603-5
• Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality Disorder and Criminal Law, ISBN 978-0-8147-9764-8

Saks' latest book, The Center Cannot Hold, won the Time Magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the Year Award, the Books for a Better Life Inspirational Memoir Award, and has been on the New York Times Extended Best Sellers List.

See also

• List of people with schizophrenia
• Is There No Place on Earth for Me?
• Kay Redfield Jamison
• Robert Whitaker
• Peter Breggin
• James Gottstein
• Peter Lehmann
• Anatomy of an Epidemic
• David Oaks
• Rethinking Madness

External links

• Elyn Saks at USC Gould
• Interview from National Public Radio
• Interview on The Charlie Rose Talk Show
• "Elyn Saks: A tale of mental illness from the inside" on TED - Ideas Worth Spreading.
• Successful and Schizophrenic: opinion piece in the New York Times