The Day the Voices Stopped

The Day the Voices Stopped: A Schizophrenic's Journey from Madness to Hope is a 2001 posthumous memoir by Ken Steele and Claire Berman about Steele's life with schizophrenia and his recovery after the invention of risperidone, an atypical antipsychotic. Published by Basic Books, The Day the Voices Stopped follows Steele as he moves from his hometown to New York City and eventually becomes a gay prostitute. After cycling in and out of homelessness, psychiatric hospitals, halfway houses, jobs, alcohol use, and suicide attempts across the United States, all the while with inner voices hectoring him, Steele eventually recovers to quiet the voices and form a get out the vote organization and a newspaper in NYC.

Reviewers noted how the book provided an insider's account of the disease, including accounts of psychiatric hospitals from a consumer perspective, and found his eventual recovery a complement to the book's earlier grim tone. Publishers Weekly stated many readers will feel drained by the time he becomes a spokesman for the mentally ill, while the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education listed the book as one of six autobiographies to engage students of neuroscience, psychology, and general education for a neurobiology of disease course. A revised edition (paperback) was published in 2002.