The Vanishing Children

A gripping portrait of four children and their mysterious descent into psychosis—and ultimately emerged on the other side, from NIH researcher and chief of research at the American Psychiatric Association Dr. Nitin Gogtay. At the turn of the twenty-first century, hundreds of families journeyed across the country to the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda. Desperate for answers about their children. These parents had caught wind of a landmark new study co-led by a young psychiatrist named Dr. Nitin Gogtay, who was looking to determine how acute psychotic illnesses manifest in their youngest, purest form. Most children arrived in a deep fog of hallucinations and voices. Some had a history of over twenty inpatient admissions; others were taking up to forty to fifty medications a day. Nearly all of them were lacking proper care and treatment. Over the next twenty years, their families’ lives would be radically transformed for the better. In a deft blend of medical mystery and reportage, The Vanishing Children tells the riveting, ultimately hopeful stories of four children—Conner, Naomi, Sunny and Owen—who took part in one of the world’s first and only longitudinal studies of childhood mental illness. Their families journeyed down the rabbit hole of confounding symptoms, astounding rates of misdiagnoses and rushed, profit-driven treatment before they finally entered the study. There, over the next two decades, Dr. Gogtay and his team would introduce a groundbreaking “wraparound care” model that would change their lives forever. The result is more than just four unforgettable stories—it’s a road map for healing our fractured pediatric mental health care system.