ROOTSTOWN TWP.: Northeast Ohio Medical University is getting $5.5 million to improve the lives of patients with schizophrenia.
The four-year grant announced on Thursday from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation for NEOMED’s Best Practices in Schizophrenia Treatment (BeST) Center is the university’s largest grant from a private foundation.
“Far too many people don’t have access to proven treatments,” BeST Center Director Lon Herman said. “With treatment, their illness is manageable.”
The money will be used to expand efforts to provide more immediate, coordinated care for patients experiencing an initial psychotic episode, as well as better follow-up care, said Dr. Mark R. Munetz, the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation endowed chair of psychiatry at the university and executive director of the BeST Center.
“Typically, such people take months or sometimes years before they really get into treatment and don’t often get comprehensive treatment,” he said. “ … If you have comprehensive, early intervention, you can actually avoid disability by providing the treatment up front and in an intense way.”
Schizophrenia is a chronic, disabling brain disorder that affects about 1 percent of Americans, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Symptoms can include delusions, hallucinations, bizarre behavior and disorganized speech.
Although a cure for schizophrenia has not been discovered, anti-psychotic medications and intensive counseling can be used to treat symptoms.
The $5.5 million grant was announced during an event Thursday morning at the medical university’s main campus in Portage County.
Featured speaker former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy II said the BeST Center is an example of how mental health services should be provided nationwide.
“You’re investing in something that is going to make a difference,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy was lead sponsor of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 and co-founder of One Mind for Research, a recently formed national coalition seeking treatments and cures for neurologic and psychiatric diseases.
Too often, he said, mental illness is treated differently from other serious illnesses.
“If you had a heart attack, you’d respond right away,” he said. “Isn’t it shocking in this country if you have a mental illness we delay your care?”
The BeST Center was launched with an initial $5 million grant four years ago from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation.
The mission of the BeST Center “is to promote recovery and improve the lives of as many people with schizophrenia as possible by accelerating adoption of evidence-based and promising practices.”
“We invest in stuff here in Ohio that can be a model throughout the nation,” said Rick Kellar, president of the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation, a nonprofit in Hudson dedicated to improving mental health services.
One of the BeST Center’s key initiatives is its First program, a system for early identification and immediate treatment of patients experiencing an initial episode of psychosis.
So far, 84 percent of patients with schizophrenia who have participated in the First program in Summit County are working or attending school, compared to a national average of 15 percent nationwide, according to Munetz.
After 12 months in the program, 5 percent were hospitalized for their mental illness, he said. The national average is as high as 50 percent.
For one Akron-area family, the First program helped bring their son back.
His problems started in high school, when he had struggled with depression, low self-esteem and anxiety, recalled his mother, who asked not to be identified because many of their friends and family don’t know about his diagnosis.
The once cheerful, happy-go-lucky boy became angry and violent.
Repeated hospitalizations, counseling appointments and anti-depressants he often refused to take didn’t help, his mother said. “It just seemed like nothing was working.”
Late last year, he ran away from home during a psychotic episode.
He would later tell his parents he can’t remember much from his time on the streets, other than the starvation and intense fear that people were out to kill him.
When his family found him after a desperate month of searching, he was hospitalized and referred to the First program.
His doctor at Child Guidance & Family Solutions, a partner with the BeST Center, started him on anti-psychotic medications and counseling, his mother said. When he had problems, his parents could call and get an appointment the next day, rather than waiting days or even weeks.
The 19-year-old now is recovering and working with the program to find a part-time job.
“He’s back to being the lovable person that he was, that we really didn’t see for a long time,” his mother said.
For more information about the BeST Center and its programs, go online to www.neomed.edu/academics/bestcenter or call 330-325-6698.
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or cpowell@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Powell on Twitter at twitter.com/abjcherylpowell.