15 Facts About Susannah Cahalan

Susannah Cahalan was born on January 30,1985 and is an American writer and author, known for writing the memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, about her hospitalization with a rare autoimmune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

Susannah Cahalan published a second book, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness, in 2019.

Susannah Cahalan was a journalist for the New York Post before she became ill and her editor suggested that she write about her disease and its effect on her.

Susannah Cahalan had to recreate the timeline of everything that happened, gathering different records from the hospital to keep track of what happened and when.

Susannah Cahalan gave a lecture at the opening session of the American Psychiatric Association's 2017 meeting.

Susannah Cahalan's disease manifested in 2009 when she was just 24 years old.

Concerned by the numbness, Susannah Cahalan sought out a neurologist who ran multiple inconclusive tests, including two normal MRIs.

Susannah Cahalan describes the hospital neurologist as dismissive, and she received her first of multiple misdiagnoses: alcohol withdrawal.

Susannah Cahalan was released from the hospital, and as her disease worsened, she had another grand mal seizure.

Unlike many anti-NMDA cases, Susannah Cahalan was never admitted to a psychiatric ward.

Susannah Cahalan had two lumbar puncture procedures that revealed high white blood cell counts.

When Susannah Cahalan drew her clock, she was only able to recreate half of it, indicating injury to one side of her brain.

Susannah Cahalan was only the 217th person diagnosed with this illness.

Susannah Cahalan made a full recovery without suffering long-term brain damage.

Susannah Cahalan was drawn to this study due to her own experiences with being improperly diagnosed with mental illness, but as she researched Rosenhan and his activity, she began to find contradictions in his work that made her question the validity of his experiment.