Psychotic disorders are mental illnesses that are characterized by psychotic symptoms, which can generally be described as a loss of contact with reality. The most common and well-known psychotic disorder is schizophrenia.
Back in 1992, Dr. John Gilmore, a professor of psychiatry at UNC, started the Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program at UNC. Seventeen years later, he founded UNC’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health to further the care of patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
“We started the center in 2009 and it grew out of our Schizophrenia Treatment Program,” Gilmore said. “We’ve had a fairly good treatment program for people who have schizophrenia, but we wanted to expand it more into the community.”
The Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health was created to help provide better services in the community and expand treatment for the people who needed it most. Now, the center serves about 1,600 people.
Approximately one percent of the population, or one out of a hundred people, has schizophrenia. Like pneumonia, which can be caused by various bacteria, viruses, or chemicals, schizophrenia is known to have multiple causes. Gilmore said research suggests that both genes and environmental factors are involved in developing the illness.
“It’s definitely genetic,” Gilmore said. “It definitely runs in families. There are environmental risk factors for schizophrenia. Premature birth or heavy, sustained marijuana use during adolescence can increase your risks of developing psychosis and schizophrenia. So, everybody kind of gets to having their illness in an individual way. It’s a combination of a lot of different risk factors.”
Typical symptoms of schizophrenia include trouble sleeping, mood instability and psychosis – which can involve hallucinations and paranoid delusions. Gilmore said, when it comes to schizophrenia, movies and the mainstream media don’t give a very accurate portrayal of the illness.
“The way it’s portrayed in the media is you’re a homeless person or you’re a crazed killer and that’s kind of the stigma around having this illness, but, in fact, a lot of our patients have jobs, they have significant relationships, they live independently – they have a pretty normal life,” Gilmore said. “That’s what we really aspire to do to help people get to that point.”
While the illness typically occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood, schizophrenia can develop at any time in life. Studies show that women tend to develop schizophrenia at an older age than men.
Because schizophrenia becomes increasingly debilitating the longer it goes untreated, Gilmore said detecting schizophrenia in it’s earlier stages is critical when helping people receive the care they need.
“There’s a lot of evidence that with good treatment early on in the course of the illness, we can really make the severity of the illness much, much less,” Gilmore said. “It’s sad because most people – I think it’s 18 to 24 months – up to two years people will have symptoms before they actually get treatment.”
Gilmore said changing the conversation around misunderstood illnesses like schizophrenia begins with education – and while there’s still a lot to learn, that education needs to start with patients and those who are suffering in silence.
“We have to do a lot of that work with people that actually get schizophrenia because a lot of times when you ask, ‘it looks like you have schizophrenia what does that mean to you’ – ‘well that means my life is completely shot and I’m going to end up homeless,’” Gilmore said. “So, we do a lot of education with patients and their families about how that’s just not true.”
You can learn more about UNC’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health and their work to treat patients with severe mental illness here.
Check out the last issue of “Addressing Taboo Topics” regarding Anxiety and Depression During Pregnancy here.
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