Awards: Past Winners

Prisoner of His Thoughts

Entrants: Felice Freyer

Affiliation: The Providence Journal

Year: 2006

Medium Newspapers (90,000-250,000 circ.)

Place: Second Place

Felice Freyer tells the story of Mario Della Grotta, whose obsessive-compulsive disorder started when he was 10 and got worse. By the time he was 30, obsessions and rituals were occupying his every waking hour, impervious to medications, too intense for therapy. In 2001 Della Grotta was the first person in the United States to have wires with slender electrodes at their tips implanted in his brain.

Judges' Comments: Revealing look into life with disabling OCD, and the tension between whether an experimental brain implant treats the disease or changes the patient’s personality.