An Unarranged Life

A budding friendship with a college girlfriend is cut short by an arranged marriage with a girl from a traditional, rural family. Thirteen years and three children later, she is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Against a psychiatrist's recommendation that he divorce his wife, the author becomes her caregiver. Amid the challenges of a time when schizophrenia was not widely recognized or diagnosed, he begins to organize and assist other caregivers of schizophrenia sufferers. In the course of his journey, at times lonely and harrowing, his drive for social activism connects him not only with other mental health activists but also with visionaries, social workers and artists.