Psychotic Disorders Related Content

Everything You Need To Know About Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition that affects how people think, feel, and behave. People with schizophrenia experience psychosis with symptoms that include hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t there), and delusions (believing things that cannot be true). When people...

Peer Specialists Model Recovery for Those Struggling With Mental Illness

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....

Dr. Ann Shinn Receives McMahon Mentoring Award

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...

WellSpace Grows to Help More Young Adults

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...

New Clinic Strives to Mitigate Risk of Developing Psychotic Disorders

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...

One Nurse’s Commitment to Learning and Teaching Every Day

“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...

Collaborations Help the LEAP Center Study Early Psychosis

“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...

Yale Hicks: His Journey to Becoming a Peer Specialist

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...

Peer Counseling’s Critical Role in Psychosis Treatment

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...

30 Years of Inspiration and Mentorship

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...

Exploring the Intersection of Cognition and Severe Mental Illness

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...