Contributed by Charles Barber

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Online Story

May 5, 2015

Uncovering the Source of Suicidality with Brain Science

Are Serotonin Levels the Key Factor in Suicidal Depression?

Charles Barber

I'm at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in northern Manhattan. My guide, Victoria, has been studying the brains of people who committed suicide, and has discovered that the biochemistry of their brains differs significantly from that of people who don't commit suicide. But there are aspects of their work that trouble me. Could our brains be so sick that they'll kill us? How much do our brain chemicals control our lives, and what control is left to us? Read More
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Magazine Article

September 1, 2008

Our Serotonin, Our Selves?

Can the Brains of the Dead Give Hope to the Living?

Charles Barber

A project studying the brains of people who committed suicide raises basic questions about how much brain chemicals control our lives and what control is left is to us. Read More
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Magazine Article - Family Matters

September 1, 2005

Songs from the Black Chair

When shared mental anguish yields connection

Charles Barber

As my madness mounted, and my sheer, disbelieving outrage that I, of so much apparent promise and poise, could be mentally assaulted and overwhelmed by such nonsense, I started having thoughts of killing people. By the end of my freshman year, I couldn't go out at night, for fear that I might grab some man, and drag him into the bushes, and stab him. I had the same fear about women. Read More

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Charles Barber

Charles Barber is the author of Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation and Songs from the Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors. He's a senior administrator at The Connection, a social services agency, and a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.