Tom Davis

Tom Davis is an award-winning journalist and web producer who is editor of Best's Review and formerly served as New Jersey editor at Patch.com. His first book, "A Legacy of Madness: Recovering My Family from Generations of Mental Illness," was released by Hazelden Publishing on Oct. 3, 2011. Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who is nationally known for championing mental health causes, has endorsed the book. "A Legacy of Madness breaks down the barriers of silence that shroud mental illnesses within families for generations," she said. "It also details the larger problem of stigma and the failures of a system ill-equipped to provide adequate treatment and support. By sharing the story of his family history and his own personal journey, Tom Davis provides hope and inspiration to others."

The book follows Davis's journey as he explored and discovered the roots of his family's mental health past, stretching back five generations and beginning with the Civil War.

Tom's columns also appear in The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-davis.

Until 2010, he was a multi-media journalist with The Record of Bergen County, N.J., and also wrote articles that appeared in The Star-Ledger. He teaches journalism classes at Rutgers University, where he sits on the Digital Committee and is helping to develop more of a digital media presence in the Journalism and Media Studies Department.

At The Record, he wrote "Coping" - one of the nation's only mental health columns - for five years. In 2007, he was named "Citizen of the Year" by the American Psychiatric Association's New Jersey chapter. Davis also received an ambassador award from the New Jersey Governor's Council on Stigma in 2008. He taught a groundbreaking course on mental health issues in the media at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

Tom Davis was one of six people in the nation to win the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship in 2004. He also writes a blog called Coping with Life which deals with life, family and mental health issues.

To contact him, check out www.tom-davis.net or www.tom-davis.net/rutgers.html or send an email to tddink@hotmail.com. Tom Davis 's Wikipedia page can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Davis_(journalist).