Psychotic Disorders Related Content

It was while attending an open Narcotics Anonymous meeting with a family member that Lisa Charland saw first-hand the powerful role peers could play in a person’s recovery. Her family member was a featured speaker, and afterward, people shared with him that he was the reason they were in recovery....

Ann K. Shinn, MD, MPH, is the 2022 recipient of the Thomas A. McMahon Mentoring Award from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST). Shinn is the director of clinical research for McLean Hospital’s Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Research Program. The McMahon Award was...

Since its founding in 2016, McLean Hospital’s WellSpace program has expanded to provide more support and education to young adults who have had experiences with psychosis. According to WellSpace Coordinator Stephen Fedele, the program has grown from “offering just two groups one-and-a-half days a...

Schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder with psychotic features are diagnoses laden with stigma, and they can sound downright frightening. Child psychiatrist Perihan Esra Guvenek-Cokol, MD, an expert in psychotic disorders, doesn’t dispute their seriousness. But she knows that...

“At our program, you learn from your coworkers and you learn from your patients every day,” said Florence Morin, RN, a clinical coordinator for McLean Hospital’s Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Inpatient Program, known as AB2. “Also, in our job, you’re always educating people—coworkers, patients...

Mary Lou England, RN, came to McLean Hospital at age 23, right out of nursing school, and she never left. Now, almost 31 years later, she serves as a clinical coordinator for the Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Inpatient Program. “My career has been shaped and influenced by the many women I have...

“Severe mental illnesses are common, they cause a lot of impairment, and available treatments are only partially effective and have many side effects,” said Dost Öngür, MD, PhD, director of McLean’s Laboratory for Early Psychosis (LEAP) Center. “One of the best promises for improving on this picture...

For Kathryn Eve Lewandowski, PhD, events like Women’s History Month can encourage organizations to increase their support for women professionals. “I think that it’s tremendously important that institutions like McLean take time to highlight the work that women are doing every day, and the many ways...

Yale Hicks told his college friends in New Orleans that he cut short his junior year abroad in Ghana because of malaria. “I lied to everybody, including myself,” said Hicks, who was experiencing hallucinations associated with what was eventually diagnosed as bipolar disorder. “I was about 21, and it...

If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step, what is better than having someone along with whom to share it? That is the philosophy behind the peer counseling program at McLean Hospital’s Division of Psychotic Disorders. “A lot of people with these conditions have difficulty working outside...

Ross J. Baldessarini, MD, originally thought he wanted to be an industrial organic chemist, not a doctor. The prospect of medical school didn’t thrill the Williams College chemistry major. He found it to be more like a trade school than an academic endeavor, not to mention it being “cutthroat and...

McLean Hospital’s Chloe Pedalino, LICSW, says that individuals receive “wraparound care while they’re in the hospital, but they don’t always get that care after discharge.” This is one reason McLean is launching its new Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT). The program will bring...