News and Commentary from the

Treatment Advocacy Center

October 2021

Below is a summary of recent developments and compelling news stories from across the country highlighting America's broken mental health treatment system and how to fix it.

Coverage of our Successful CDC Campaign

Treatment Advocacy Center Executive Director Lisa Dailey was quoted in an article about our successful push to have schizophrenia spectrum disorders added to CDC's list of underlying medical conditions with heightened risk of severe COVID-19. Read more h ere.

Executive Director Lisa Dailey was also quoted in a Huffington Post story about the CDC's decision to add schizophrenia spectrum disorders to its list of underlying conditions giving rise to a heightened risk for severe COVID-19. Read more here.

Treatment Advocacy Center, along with fifteen major mental health groups, released a statement applauding the CDC for including schizophrenia spectrum disorders on its list of underlying medical conditions giving rise to a heightened risk of severe COVID-19. Read more here.

Speaker's Bureau

Treatment Advocacy Center staff were busy this month educating the public about the barriers to treatment faced by people with severe mental illness.

Treatment Advocacy Center Executive Director Lisa Dailey spoke at American Enterprise Institute's panel, titled "Combating Homelessness in America's Cities," about how to help unhoused people with severe mental illness get the treatment they need. Watch the full stream here.

Sabah Muhammad, our DJ Jaffe advocate, gave a speech arguing for a safer future by having mental health professionals, not police, respond to mental health crises, and described her experience at the intersection of race and severe mental illness, at the Third Annual Morris County Mental Health and Addictions Coalitions Legislative Breakfast. You can watch the full event here.

Additionally, Policy Director Brian Stettin was a panelist in a discussion about the legal and ethical balancing act of respecting personal autonomy while providing treatment for individuals with SMI, during Capitol Weekly's conference about California's mental health crisis. Listen to it here.

RESEARCH WEEKLY: October 2021 Recap

How psychosis impacts women and men differently

Researchers from Brown University Medical School studied differences in the course of illness and presentation of symptoms between men and women by conducting interviews with people with schizophrenia utilizing a semi-structured interview template designed to assess illness narratives associated with schizophrenia. Women and men both discussed how experiencing psychosis impacts their work through loss or changes in work trajectories, and isolation and strain on their relationships. Women were more likely to include parenting in the discussion of how psychosis has impacted their life, including the sadness of loss of a parenting role. Another major difference between men and women’s experience of psychosis pertains to stigma, where men felt they were often perceived by others as dangerous and women stated experiencing stigma in the form of paternalism in relationships, where others treated them like children or minimized their experiences.

Find all of this month's research highlights here.

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