Mental Health and Schizophrenia

With over 43,000 students across UW-Madison’s large campus, it’s easy to feel swept up and alone among the sea of people. However, over 2 ½ years ago, Colin Bass found a way to make it feel a little smaller. If you’re ever traversing the busy streets of Madison, you might have come across numerous lime green bandanas tied to the bags of both students and faculty. What’s the significance of these small strips of fabric? The bandanas are apart of a campus wide mental-health initiative that is beginning to reach other campuses.

The idea stems from the story of students at another university tying white ribbons to their backpacks to show unity when an instructor lost a child to suicide. Consequently, Colin Bass, executive board member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), got wind of the story and was inspired to expand it to serve a broader effort. Participating students don the lime green bandanas, indicate that they are a safe individual to approach with mental health-related issues. Similarly, they typically have resource cards (provided by the UWPD) with outlets to get help and support in times of crisis such as UHS, NAMI-UW, and National Crisis Lines. 3,500 bandanas later, about 8% of participants have been approached by a peer requesting a resource card and the frequency of conversations surrounding mental illness have increased.

8%, or 240 people, might seem like a relatively small number, but it’s 240 conversations that might not have happened otherwise. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a mental health survey across universities in eight different countries. Across the board, the data reflected that 35% of students that responded to the survey reported symptoms persistent with at least one mental health disorder. The most common two being Major Depressive Disorder, followed by Generalized Anxiety Disorder, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

In short, one in three college students, globally, experience symptoms consistent with at least one to six mental health disorders, and only 15-20% of the students seek help.

“Mental health is really important because so many ignore it and take it for granted,” said PhD candidate, Dorcas Akinniyi-Jansen. With degrees in psychology and sociology (B.S.) and counseling psychology (M.S. and PhD candidate), Akinniyi-Jansen has encountered numerous individuals from varying walks of life. But there is one overarching commonality between the majority of them—the disregard or disinterest in how their environments can affect their judgement.

Akinniyi-Jansen notes that more often than not, people “aren’t aware of the situations in their lives and how it’s affecting them until they’re at a really low point and aren’t in control. Whereas that’s entirely the point [of mental health and wellness]” The purpose isn’t to show how out of control one is, it’s to instill control.

As a result, UW-Madison has a plethora of programs through their Mental Health Services available to students. For instance, there’s group and individual counseling, Silver Cloud (an online self-guided resource), yoga for stress relief, and Let’s Talk (informal drop-in counseling sessions at locations across campus).

Furthermore, as one of the top ten in national research spending, UW has funded numerous projects and studies in relation to mental health and disorders. Consequently, with the department of psychiatry researchers, UW has established many labs exploring the effects of sleep, emotions, past adversities, etc. on one’s mental state. Like the Abercrombie Lab’s DASH study that focused on depression and stress hormones in women, or the Kalin Lab’s studies on anxious temperaments and mood disorders.

In general, between the psychiatry faculty researchers, the more common disorders like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, seasonal affective disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder have been delved into. However, more scarcely discussed disorders can be overlooked and understudied. Like schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a “constellation of symptoms,” as opposed to having a single, explicit definition. The word itself is derived from the Greek stems “schizo-”, meaning split, and “-phen” which is the mind. Combine the two and the rough definition of the word can be translated as the splitting of one’s mind. Hence why people often confuse it with the possession of multiple or split personalities. However, schizophrenia is characterized by psychosis where one loses touch with reality.

Consequently, this is where many of the negative misconceptions about schizophrenia comes from. For example, individuals spontaneously snapping and slipping into psychotic bouts without warning. Or, that the disorder will only worsen in severity over time causing people to spiral out of control until they can’t differentiate reality from imagination. And neither of the two are true.

In reality, a person can be schizophrenic and not experience any delusions or hallucinations. The disorder itself has varying symptoms ranging from hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, or even disorganized and/or catatonic behavior, wherein an individual remains speechless and motionless for an extended period.

“Each person’s story with schizophrenia is unique to their own,” said Cecilia McGough, astronomy and physics major at Penn State University. Aside from her academic pursuits, McGuogh is also the founder and president of the Penn State Pulsar Search Collaboratory, through which she has competed in the International Space Olympics in Russia as a representative of the United States, as well as being a Virginia aerospace science and technology scholar. Nonetheless, outside of her numerous academic feats, her schizophrenia has painted a large portion of her life.

“At this time [McGuogh’s freshman year of college], I started seeing, hearing, and feeling things that weren’t there...” McGough begins. Initially, she was followed by a clown resembling the one from It, by Stephen King, then tiny crawling spiders, and then a large spider with leathery skin, black legs, and a yellow body whose legs sounded like young children laughing. However, the most debilitating hallucination she experienced was a young girl that looked like she was from The Ring. The young girl would conversate with herself and say things that would “chip away” at McGough’s insecurities. But even worse, the girl would carry a knife and stab McGough repeatedly, sometimes in the face. At times, McGough couldn’t even see things, like exam papers or class worksheets, in front of her face because she was hallucinating too much. Unsurprisingly, she usually doesn’t speak so openly about her tormenting hallucinations, because people usually look at her in fear after she tells them.

We’re no longer in the era of lunatic and mental asylums, a.k.a. “crazy houses”. Patients aren’t being chained to beds and donning strait jackets like in horror films and video games. The sufferers aren’t always belligerent, violent menaces. They’re normal people not much different from me and you, and in fact, more frequently victims of unnecessary violence and being outcasted instead. And all the stigma does is push individuals with mental illness closer to their breaking points.

“We all see, hear, and feel things when we are dreaming,” McGough starts, “I’m just someone who cannot turn off my nightmares, even when I’m awake.”

Approximately 1.1% of the world’s population have schizophrenia, with about 3.5 million of the diagnosed individuals located in the United States. Ranking as one of the leading causes of disability in the world, schizophrenia is a treatable disorder. However, one in two people don’t receive treatment or any care for it.

Similarly, a multitude of people are bewildered about the causes and potential risk factors linked to the disorder. Or even why individuals experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia don’t seek help. Luckily, that’s exactly what Dr. Diane C. Gooding and her lab primarily focus on.

Dr. Gooding is a psychology and psychiatry professor at the UW-Madison along with being the Principal Investigator of the Paths Lab. Similarly, Dr. Gooding is also a member of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, and the only researcher with a primary focus on schizophrenia and schizophrenia-spectrum diseases at UW-Madison. As a result, Dr. Gooding is the universities expert on identification factors for psychotic disorders like schizophrenia in clinical settings.

However, outside of her numerous studies from observing schizotpy (characteristics and experiences relating to psychosis) using psychometric identification risk to measuring pleasure responses, Dr. Gooding is also a strong mental health advocate that fights stigma.

Stigma is a perceived negative attribute of someone or something that causes others to devalue or think less of the person as a whole. Consequently, being a member of a stigmatized group, such as people suffering from mental illness, can be a major threat to one’s self-esteem. Likewise, being in a stigmatized group can even lead to self-stigmatization or feelings of shame, secretive behavior, and avoiding interactions with others.

Aside from effecting one’s self-esteem or inducing secretive behavior, stigmatization also heavily influences the potential care or treatment of an individual with a mental illness. “Studies indicate that mental illness stigma is one of the factors related to patient’s discontinuation of antidepressants [and other prescribed medication] … in order to avoid the label of “psychiatric patient”, said Dr. Gooding.

Essentially, the higher the perceived stigma, the more likely patients were to be noncompliant with their treatment. And even in the mental health community, schizophrenia is shied away from because it makes people feel “uncomfortable”. So even when someone seeks out mental health services, Dr. Gooding noted that the fear of stigma was powerful enough to deter them from beginning or adhering to antipsychotic or antidepressant medications. These fears also resonated with McGough.

“Don’t let anyone convince you not to get medical help. It’s not worth it,” McGough said. After being told to hide her schizophrenia by her mother because people would think McGough is crazy, she didn’t open up about her struggles until the second time she was hospitalized. And only then because the police had gotten involved.

Following a discussion with her dormmates, RA, and Penn State mental health services, McGough had decided she needed to be admitted to a psychiatric ward for treatment. However, despite being entirely willing and no refusing, the RA and mental health services representative bought police officers into her dorm room and had her padded down. After convincing the officers not to handcuff her, they escorted her to a police car waiting outside of one of the campus’ most common dining facilities. Where friends and peers could see her being put into the police car. And by then it was apparent to everything that something was wrong.

So she came clean.

McGough began to properly seek out treatment and get proper medication to help manage her schizophrenia. She then made a blog post opening up about her struggles, that, to her surprise, garnered a lot of support and even people he knew revealing that they also had schizophrenia as well! To this day McGough still believes that getting proper medical help was the best decision she ever made and is now a dedicated advocate for both mental health and schizophrenia. And she wants everyone to know that its ok to have schizophrenia and that its ok to have a mental illness.

“One stigma I think people should move from is the idea that you can just get over it and move on.” Akinniyi-Jansen said, “it puts blame on the person and introduces a lot of “-if I was…” beliefs/ -statements when in reality everyone [who] deals with it [struggles]. It’s like if you had a cold or cancer, you wouldn’t just tell yourself to get over it, you’d try to heal yourself.” The mind needs care just like the rest of your body, so don’t let the stigma around mental health keep you from being healthy.