Mark Vonnegut
Doctor · Author
Mark Vonnegut is an American pediatrician who has practiced in Massachusetts and taught at Harvard Medical School. He has also written extensively about his experience with serious mental illness, beginning with the memoir The Eden Express. [1]
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Career and work
Vonnegut entered Harvard Medical School at 28 and went on to become a pediatrician. He has run a pediatric practice in Quincy, Massachusetts, taught at Harvard Medical School, and cared for multiple generations of children in the same community. [5][1]
Alongside medicine, Vonnegut has written several books drawing on different parts of his life and work. The Eden Express (1975) recounts his early experience with serious mental illness; Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So (2010) follows his later life, including medical training and pediatric practice. In The Heart of Caring (2022), he reflected on four decades of practicing medicine and changes in the American healthcare system. [7]
What has been publicly discussed
“I’ve found that patients are much more concerned with the quality of care they receive than with whatever psychiatric problems their physician might have.”
— Mark Vonnegut [1]
