Mark Vonnegut

Mark Vonnegut, M.D. is a pediatrician and memoirist who is very open about his struggles with mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. The son of Kurt and Jane Cox Vonnegut, he was born in Chicago in 1947 and moved to Cape Cod when he was four years old. He received a B.A. in Religion from Swarthmore in 1969, and subsequently fled to a commune in British Columbia, where he had his first psychotic break. He was originally diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, but was subsequently diagnosed as manic depressive; the medically preferred term is now Bipolar. He spent several years back on the Cape recovering, working odd jobs, and completing his first book.

"The Eden Express" was published in 1975 and has remained in print ever since. The New York Times declared it “required reading for those who want to understand insanity from the inside.” Against all odds, determined to prove that mental illness didn’t make him damaged goods, Vonnegut applied and was admitted to Harvard Medical School. He’s had a total of four psychotic breaks and hospitalizations, but he always manages to get better.

Vonnegut's second book, "Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So" was published in 2010. He has served on the Harvard Medical School Admissions Committee, and is an instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He has spoken at numerous conferences and has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Boston Globe, among others, on topics ranging from ADHD to mental illness.

Vonnegut is married to Barbara Sibert Vonnegut and has three sons, Zachary, 44, Eli, 41, and Mark Oliver, 19. He paints wicked good, plays the saxophone OK, and likes to chase his dog around the house.