This Is Your Brain With Schizophrenia: How the Illness Manifests and What Researchers Are Doing to Help
Thanks to cutting-edge innovations in imaging, adherence and early intervention, mental health researchers are making crucial advances in the understanding and management of the complex condition. We delve into their work for Mental Health Awareness Month.
By Jessica Brown
Even if you don’t know anyone who has schizophrenia, chances are you’re familiar with the symptoms.
People with the condition may experience hallucinations, delusions and paranoia, as well as have difficulty concentrating, organizing their thoughts and doing basic tasks of everyday life.
For many years, doctors had little insight into the illness beyond patients’ self-reported symptoms. The causes of schizophrenia, and the way it impacts the brain, were mostly a mystery due to the unique challenges researchers faced in trying to understand the most complex—and least accessible—organ in the body.
But today, with the aid of new technology, that mystery is starting to unravel.
“We’ve seen tremendous advances in the understanding and management of schizophrenia over the past several years,” says Husseini Manji, M.D., Global Therapeutic Head for Neuroscience at Janssen Research & Development, part of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. “It’s a very exciting time in the field.”
The potential to provide new therapies to those affected by schizophrenia is partly what drew Dr. Manji to the company back in 2008, when he was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program. “Several pharmaceutical companies had tried to convince me to join them, but Johnson & Johnson was committed to neuroscience at a time when many of them were pulling away from it," he explains. "The science of mental illnesses had matured to the point that it could be converted to advances in treatments for conditions like schizophrenia.”
For the 1% of the U.S. adult population that has schizophrenia—that's almost 2.5 million people—advancements in the understanding and treatment of such a complicated illness can’t come soon enough.
Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating mental illnesses, typically emerging in a person’s late teens or early 20s. The consequences can be devastating: Those with schizophrenia are at greater risk of unemployment, homelessness and incarceration. Approximately one-third will attempt suicide, and about one in 10 will eventually take their own lives.
