Mary Barnes

Mary Edith Barnes (9 February 1923 – 29 June 2001) was an English artist and writer with schizophrenia and became a successful painter. She is particularly known for her documentation of her experience at R. D. Laing's experimental therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall, London. She is referenced in the book The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson and Thomas Szasz's Schizophrenia. Life Early life Mary Barnes grew up in Portsmouth, England and then later in the London countryside. Her father was a lab technician and her mother was a homemaker. When Barnes was 18, her brother Peter who was 16 at the time, was committed to a psychiatric ward and diagnosed with Schizophrenia. A few years later he was sent to long-term institutional care. Nursing career Mary Barnes trained as a nurse and joined the army in World War II. In 1945, Barnes spent a year working at hospitals in Egypt and Palestine. She worked in Frankfurt for two years before returning to London as a full-time nurse.