The Great Pretender

by Susannah Cahalan

First published 2019

In the 1970s, a Stanford psychologist and seven others went undercover into asylums to test psychiatry's methods. What they uncovered was a system in crisis, with patients wrongly diagnosed and horribly mistreated. Now, one journalist unravels the true story behind this watershed moment, exposing the mysteries that still haunt the field of mental health.

Genres: biography, history, medical, 20th-century, 21st-century, academic

Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: investigative-journalism, uncovering-the-truth

Setting: United States

416 pages · Paperback

Content warnings: abuse, medical-trauma, mental-illness

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