The Man Who Helped Millions, Including My Family, 'Survive Schizophrenia'

A conversation with E. Fuller Torrey, author of "Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual." He's a rare find in today's medical world—a psychiatrist who refuses to give up on the most severely ill.

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, people with psychiatric diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are 10 times more likely to be in a U.S. jail or prison than a hospital bed (iStock.com)

By Michael Judge

It’s not often that you can look back on your life and say, with certainty, this person saved my life. But that’s how I feel about Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, the world-renowned psychiatrist and best-selling author known to friends simply as Fuller.

Back in April 1983, when Fuller’s groundbreaking book Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual was first published, I was a 16-year-old kid who had just lost two of his greatest heroes to schizophrenia.

My brother Steve was battling the horrific symptoms of the brain disease—delusions, hallucinations, severe paranoia—after being diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1979 while a third-year cadet at the Air Force Academy. My brother John, a star football player with a full-ride scholarship to the University of Iowa, took his own life ju…