Ben Kerschberg is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Virginia. Since graduating from law school, he has clerked for a federal court of appeals judge, practiced law, and worked as an industry analyst for a public software company in Silicon Valley... He will spend the next two years as a Fellow at Yale Law School, where he hopes to write a book about the manner in which American society stigmatizes mental illness.

Ben Kerschberg knew at age seven that he would one day attempt suicide. ... It was not an idea he toyed with. He just knew. And he was right.

In (his book) Piercing The Veil, Kerschberg takes us with unflinching candor on a journey that begins in his sophomore year of college, when he suffers the first of a series of repeated and calamitous nervous breakdowns precipitated by daily suicidal ideations. His lifetime battle with his inner demons culminates, at age 30, in a failed suicide attempt and hospitalization in a psychiatric institution. His astonishing tale opens the eyes of those who have never suffered from mental illness and empowers those who have but feel that their truth must be bottled, corked, and sealed with wax. At times disarmingly funny, but more often poetically tragic, Kerschberg’s account breaks onto the scene with a powerful voice that will leave people reaching out to their friends and loved ones.

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