Unlocking the Black Box of Schizophrenia

Memorial Day special Shell shock. Battle fatigue. War neuroses. When most of us think about veterans and mental illness, our first thought is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — or one of the many ways we used to describe the associated symptoms. But not every soldier who returns from war with a mental illness is struggling […]

Marijuana, or cannabis, is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world — especially among teenagers. According to the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 19 million Americans use cannabis on a regular basis, the majority of whom started using it as an adolescent. Researchers have long been aware that […]

Few mental disorders are as misunderstood as schizophrenia. When we turn on the television, we’re saturated with images of unpredictable “psychotic” villains. The word “schizo” is an insult that might be heard in a high school hallway. People with schizophrenia are often discriminated against, in part because most of the public doesn’t understand what schizophrenia […]

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric illness that affects roughly 1 in every 100 adults. To put this into perspective, you are more likely to develop schizophrenia than to win the lottery, even if you buy over 130,000 tickets. Luckily — or unluckily, depending on your family history — schizophrenia is as much as 90 percent heritable. […]