Fried is the co-author, with Patrick Kennedy, of the 2015 New York Times bestseller A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. He is also the author of five other nonfiction books, including two specifically on healthcare, mental illness and addiction: Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs (which triggered an FDA inquiry into CNS adverse reactions to antibiotics) and Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (which inspired the Emmy-winning HBO film Gia starring Angelina Jolie); as well as Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time (a New York Times bestseller that was the subject of a PBS documentary), The New Rabbi and the essay collection Husbandry.

His healthcare articles are included in a variety of textbooks, he has given Grand Rounds on mental illness and pharmaceutical safety issues at many medical schools, and he has lectured on investigative and narrative techniques in mental health stories for Investigative Reporters and Editors, the national Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Mayborne Literary Nonfiction Conference. He has also taught training psychiatrists at Columbia’s medical school how to write for the lay public, and lectured on the subject for caregivers and advocates at the meetings of the National Council for Behavioral Health, the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA). He served as an editorial consultant to Drs. Jeffrey Lieberman and Dilip Jeste during their tenures as president of the APA.