Full recovery on Clozapine?
Bethany Yeiser was an academic star and became the primary author of a peer-reviewed paper when she was still an undergraduate student working in a research lab (see also her book Mind Estranged, p. 10). People who have such “high functioning at baseline” – those who were successful and accomplished before the onset of their psychiatric problems – have the greatest chance of recovery.
In her book, Yeiser describes how she started hearing voices after an emotional crisis and years of personal hardships. She never received any treatment other than medications. Medications reduced voices somewhat, but made her sleep 16-18 hours a day and had other debilitating side effects so that she “lived as a totally disabled person for 12 months, even while enduring trials of different antipsychotic medications.” She gives contradictory accounts about what happened next.
On the CureSZ website, she states, “Dr. Nasrallah started me on the medication clozapine … After about six months, I had entered full remission from the illness.” “Full remission” means that all symptoms of an illness disappear. Yeiser describes her voices as symptoms of schizophrenia. In her book, she writes, “After a year on Clozaril [another name for Clozapine], the voices were virtually gone. … I have recovered” (Mind Estranged, p. 172). Were her voices completely gone after six months (“full remission”), or “virtually gone” after a year? And what does she mean by recovery?
According to the book, Clozapine made her so sleepy and tired that she could only take one course a semester in a second-tier university and did not even think of returning to her previous top-tier school. (Mind Estranged, p. 173). Lab work, which she used to love, became too “exhausting” and she gave it up (Mind Estranged, p. 174). At the end of the book she explains that she can’t have a job “because I am tired every day due to my medication and the medication continues to make me sleep twelve hours a night” (Mind Estranged, p. 178). None of these is mentioned on the website.
Yeiser graduated in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science (BS) in biology, but neither got a job, nor continued her education. Originally, her dream was to become a research scientist or a medical doctor. For these career paths, a BS is only the first step, and she planned to go to a grad or med school. In her senior year, her plans changed when she saw terrible poverty during a trip to Africa (Mind Estranged, Chapters 10-11). She started a nonprofit foundation, raised money to build a clinic in Kenya, and eventually dropped out of college, inspired by the example of Mother Teresa, who helped the poor and did not have a college degree (Mind Estranged, pp. 54, 64-65, 80-81). After her “full remission,” Yeiser did not return to this charitable project. Instead, with the help of her psychiatrist Dr. Nasrallah, she wrote her memoir, and then “began traveling extensively to make presentations” about the benefits of clozapine and medication adherence.
If she did not work, how did she pay for extensive travel? How did she support herself between 2011, when she graduated, and 2016, when she became the president of the nonprofit foundation for research and treatment of schizophrenia CureSZ, which she co-funded with Dr. Nasrallah at his suggestion?
This foundation is the weirdest part of her story. She states that discontinuing her education in order to create a charitable foundation was a sign of her mental illness. A sane person would have understood that an advanced degree would make her “better qualified to raise money for Africa.” If she were not schizophrenic, she would have received a PhD or MD first, and only then would start a nonprofit (Mind Estranged, pp. 37, 49-50).
Why, then, did she start CureSZ without an advanced degree? Would not a medical degree make her better qualified to research and treat schizophrenia? In fact, all the other CureSZ board members have advanced degrees, most of them are MDs, but she is still only a bachelor now, fourteen years after her graduation. Why did she never realize her dream to go to medical school?
Above all, why discontinuing her education to build a clinic in Kenya was a sign of mental illness, but discontinuing her education to promote clozapine was the right thing to do? Why is building a clinic a less worthy goal than expanding clozapine prescriptions? If it was “schizophrenic” to be inspired by the example of Mother Teresa, why was it perfectly normal to be inspired by the suggestions of Dr. Nasrallah? Do the interests of CureSZ corporate sponsors — a leading Clozapine producer and other pharmaceutical companies — have anything to do with Bethany Yeiser’s narrative?
1