Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. Several years ago, she set out to investigate why so many of her patients became caught up in the legal system when discharged from her care—and what happened to them in that legal system. Drawing on extensive research as well as Dr. Montross’s own experience working in our nation’s jails and prisons, her new book, WAITING FOR AN ECHO: The Madness of American Incarceration, is a rarely-seen glimpse into the American prison system. It is also a damning account of policies that disproportionately and egregiously punish people who are mentally ill, people of color, people who are poor and people who struggle with addiction.
Dr. Christine Montross, a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in General Nonfiction, is an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a practicing inpatient psychiatrist. She is an award-winning poet and the author of Body of Work and Falling into the Fire.
