Mark Vonnegut

Vonnegut published his second book, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So, in 2010. Like The Eden Express, it is autobiographical.

Vonnegut published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, December 27, 2007, and has published several short pieces on pediatrics and other topics in The Boston Globe and The Patriot Ledger. He has served on the National Institute for Health Consensus Conference on ADHD since November 1999.

He has practiced pediatrics for over 30 years, opening his own practice, M.V. Pediatrics, in 2001. He is currently a pediatrician in Quincy, Massachusetts.

After the publication of his first book, Vonnegut studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and later came to the conclusion that he actually had bipolar disorder. Vonnegut, despite odds against him, graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979. After graduation, Vonnegut completed a pediatric Internship and Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

He is the author of The Eden Express (1975), which describes his trip to British Columbia to set up a commune with his friends and his personal experiences with schizophrenia, which at that time he attributed to stress, diet and, in part, drug use. During this period, he lived mainly at the commune at Powell Lake, located 18 kilometres by boat from the nearest road or electricity. The book is widely cited as useful for those coping with schizophrenia.

He married in 1975. He had a son, Eli James Vonnegut (b. 1980).

On February 14, 1971, he was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and committed to Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver. Standard psychotherapy did not help him, and most of his doctors said his case was hopeless.

Mark Vonnegut (whom his parents named after Mark Twain) graduated from Swarthmore College in 1969. He briefly worked at Duthie Books and was also briefly chief of a 20-man detachment of special state police that provided the security for Boston State Hospital. During the Vietnam War, he filed an application with the draft board to be considered a conscientious objector, which was denied. After taking the psychological examination, he was given a psychiatric 4-F classification and avoided conscription into the U.S. military.

Mark Vonnegut (born May 11, 1947) is an American pediatrician and memoirist. He is the son of writer Kurt Vonnegut. He is the brother of Edith Vonnegut and Nanette Vonnegut. He described himself in the preface to his 1975 book as "a hippie, son of a counterculture hero, BA in religion, (with a) genetic disposition to schizophrenia."