Susannah Cahalan (born January 30, 1985) is an American writer and author, known for writing the memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, about her hospitalization with a rare autoimmune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. Her second and third books, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness and The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, were published in 2019 and 2025, respectively. She also works as a writer for the New York Post. Cahalan's work has raised awareness for her brain disease, making it more well-known and decreasing the likelihood of misdiagnoses.
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