“I was very relieved to have a name ,” she remembered. Through individual research and talking with her psychiatrist at the time, the journalist diagnosed herself with bipolar disorder and was prescribed antipsychotics. Everything is dripping in terrible meaning.”Ĭahalan visited a variety of doctors and received a series of misdiagnoses. She remembers thinking: “I’m seeing everything in a sinister light now. She also recounted a walk through Times Square, during which colors appeared aggressively bright to Cahalan. I couldn’t actually write down what he was saying,” she told her audience.

She cited, for example, her unsuccessful attempt to interview John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted': “I noticed that, though I could understand what he was saying, I couldn’t translate it into word form. The lecture was sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.

In her talk before a packed audience at the Connecticut Mental Health Center auditorium, the New York Post journalist and author of “Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness ” recalled her psychological deterioration and her her journey to find a correct diagnosis. She also experienced uncharacteristic feelings of inadequacy and lethargy, which soon morphed into rapidly cycling manic-depressive episodes, hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. Having convinced herself there was a bedbug infestation in her apartment, she spent thousands of dollars on exterminators, despite there being no evidence of any infestation. In 2009, at the age of 24, she had recently moved into New York City.

Brain on fire author