NAMI-NYC Metro's Kenneth Johnson Memorial Research Library hosted its 7th annual "Ken" book award breakfast on Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 at the Yale Club in New York City.

Winners -- Dennis Charney, M.D., and Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D.; Mike Jay; John Katzenbach; Sharon O'Brien; Ananda Pandya, M.D., and Craig Katz, M.D.; and Jane Pauley -- were selected for their outstanding literary contributions to a better understanding of mental illness. Previous "Ken" book awardees have included such critically acclaimed authors as Wally Lamb, Rick Moody, Kay Jamison, Simon Winchester, Sherwin Nuland and Andrew Solomon.

The 2005 key note speaker was Edward Foulks, M.D., clinical director of the Southeast Louisiana Hospital, which treats people with mental illness. Dr. Foulks received his training in psychiatry in Philadelphia, then served as director of psychiatry residency education at the University of Pennsylvania for almost 20 years. He later became the associate dean and Sellars-Polchow professor of psychiatry at Tulane University.

Awards were presented by Larry Joseph Siever, M.D., executive director, Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center; Jay Neugeboren, prize-winning author and NAMI-NYC Metro board vice president; Claire Berman, award-winning author; Madeleine Blaise, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; Lloyd I. Sederer, M.D., executive deputy commissioner for Mental Hygiene, the City of New York; and Harold S. Koplewicz, M.D., founder and director of the New York University Child Study Center.

2005 Book Award Winners

The Peace of Mind Prescription: An Authoritative Guide to Finding the Most Effective Treatment for Anxiety and Depression
by Dennis Charney and Charles Nemeroff. Houghton Mifflin.
Written by two psychiatrists, this book examines the various treatments, medications and research breakthroughs for anxiety and depression, which are two of the most serious medical
disorders affecting millions of Americans today.

The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness
by Michael Jay. Avalon Publishing Group.
This intriguing literary biography of James Tilly Matthews, a Welsh tea merchant and antiwar activist, reveals one of the first studied cases of a type of schizofreniform called machine delusion. Matthews' delusion was that his mind and thoughts were being controlled remotely by a nefarious gang of 'pneumatic chemists' through the use of a secret diabolical machine he called the Air Loom.

The Madman's Tale
by John Katzenbach. Random House.
In this fictional thriller, we meet Francis Petrel, who at twenty-one is committed by his family to the purgatory of an overcrowded, understaffed mental hospital in Massachussetts. Late one night a young staff nurse is brutally murdered on the grounds and everyone from local investigators to the hospital’s patients devise chilling theories on what happened to her. The grisly crime is never solved and years later, Petrel is still haunted by dark memories of the events.

The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance
by Sharon O'Brien. University of Chicago Press.
In this memoir, writer Sharon O'Brien sets out to understand her depression by examining both the pressures of contemporary American culture and her own family history. She weaves scattered pieces of the past --her mother's memo books, her father's reading journal, family photographs, tombstones, hospital records, the family silver-- into a compelling narrative.

Disaster Psychiatry: Intervening When Nightmares Come True
by Anand Pandya and Craig Katz. Analytic Press.
The collection of essays, edited by the co-founders of Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, captures the stories of disaster psychiatry through first-person narratives in the aftermath of major disasters.

Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue
by Jane Pauley. Random House.
This beautifully written memoir tells the story of self-discovery and an extraordinary life, from Pauley's childhood in the heartland to her award-winning career as one the most famous television journalists in America.