Ellen Barry

Ellen Barry is a journalist at The New York Times, currently covering mental health for the science desk. Over a 30-year career, she has served as the Times’ Moscow bureau chief, Delhi bureau chief, and chief international correspondent, often stepping away from the news to write vivid, original narratives about people on the margins of society. She was on a team that won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and was a Pulitzer finalist in feature writing in 2002 and 2020 and in beat reporting in 2004. She won the 2017 Osborn Elliott Award for Excellence in Journalism on Asia. “The Jungle Prince of Delhi,” an article she wrote about a mysterious recluse living in a ruin in a forest in Delhi, was adapted into a New York Times podcast and is under development as a feature film.

She is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled A Woman, Falling, about postpartum mental health and the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts woman who killed her three children in what her defense describes as postpartum psychosis. The book will follow the trial, but also step back to recount the history of psychiatry’s blind spot around these experiences and recent breakthroughs by younger researchers, as women rise through the field; it will also examine the behind-the-scenes efforts to include postpartum psychosis as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Photo credit: The New York Times

This bio reflects the fellow’s work and affiliations as of their fellowship year.

• A Secret History of Psychosis: A narrative account for The New York Times of a man who, during a psychotic episode, attempted to kill his father. The subject provides a description of the early stages of psychosis so that readers can better understand how to spot the first signs.
• The Man in Room 117: A close look at the impossible pressures on a family whose son suffers from schizophrenia, but who refuses medication. This New York Times piece examines the conflicting rights and interests within a family when a person is experiencing delusions.
• Leading a Movement Away From Psychiatric Medication: A New York Times profile of Laura Delano, the leader of a movement to help people stop taking psychiatric medication.