Nev Jones, PhD
Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, recipient of major research grants
Was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was a graduate student with 4.0 GPA. When she disclosed her diagnosis at the university, she was terminated from the program and told that “we don’t have students with diagnoses that severe here.” She became a mental health patient, experiencing “disempowerment, objectification and dehumanization” and felt she was “reduced to an object to be medicated with more antipsychotics.” In 2009, she “almost joined” the many people diagnosed with mental illness who kill themselves, but then met a rare therapist dedicated to empowering her clients. A turning point for her occurred in 2010, when she joined a graduate program. She does not apply the term “recovery” to herself, because she feels that the experience of “psychosis” became a core part of her identity, creating “a strong sense of purpose.”
In the information about herself that she publicly shares, she does not describe her attitude towards her diagnosis and does not mention whether she is taking medications. She criticizes psychiatry for reducing “complex, meaning-laden experiences to meaningless symptoms of disorder or illness.” She agrees that “for some, [psychiatric] medications can be incredibly therapeutic, … but for others, these medications may not do much or may cause harm,” and she argues that patients need to be given full information about medications that does not “spin or sugar coat” anything. She fights for disability justice for people diagnosed with mental illness.
Web page: https://www.socialwork.pitt.edu/people/nev-jones
YouTube videos:
Peer-reviewed research publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nev-Jones-2