Prof Cyndi Shannon Weickert and her team of researchers are asking a question about schizophrenia that has not been answered before – Is the blood brain barrier compromised in psychosis? Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are diseases that affect an estimated 680,000 people in Australia and cost the economy $4.7 billion a year, yet their pathogenic mechanisms are little understood. One […]
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NSW Minister for Medical Research, Pru Goward, today announced an investment of $2.5 million to fund a landmark merger between Australia’s leading schizophrenia research organisations – NeuRA – Neuroscience Research Australia and the Schizophrenia Research Institute (SRI). “The best outcomes for the treatment of schizophrenia will be achieved through the opportunity of these institutes to join forces and share their […]
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Dr Justine Gatt is an NHMRC CDF Research Fellow at NeuRA. Here she shares an interesting idea: if there are ‘risky’ variants of genes that cause mental illness, could the opposite versions of these genes protect against mental illness? In other words, are risk and resilience two sides of the same coin? And where does our environment fit in the […]
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Dr Vibeke Sørensen Catts is a schizophrenia researcher. Her interests lie in exploring the biological factors that help brain cells grow and die, and how these pathways might be altered in schizophrenia. Here she describes her discovery that certain types of brain cells are inflamed in some people with schizophrenia. This recent finding opens new understanding of what goes wrong in […]
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In the final installment of Richard Schweizer’s blog series, he describes his vision for the future and why speaking out about schizophrenia is so important to him. For this, the last section of my blog I would like to convey the ups and downs of my life since being successfully medicated. I would also like to talk about my PhD […]
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In Part Two of Richard Schweizer’s blog, entitled ‘The Road to Wellness’, he takes us into the Sydney Clinic where he was admitted not long after his schizophrenia diagnosis. I spent about 3 months in the Sydney Clinic; a private mental health facility in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. My time there was not that bad. I have good things to say about the […]
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Richard Schweizer has schizophrenia. In this three part blog series he walks us through his journey from his initial symptoms to how he feels about the future… I want to suggest to you an idea that may be a little confronting. It’s an idea that may take you a while to get your head around. And the idea is this: Schizophrenia […]
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Dr Jason Bruggemann is investigating new ways of identifying children at risk of developing schizophrenia.
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I work in the field of schizophrenia research; specifically, I study schizophrenia by looking at the brain. Up until about 25 years ago, this way of studying schizophrenia was considered a dead-end career path for pathologists and researchers like me; many doubted that measurable differences between the brains of people with schizophrenia and those who don’t have a mental disorder […]
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Did you know that the brain contains its own set of chemicals that act like chemicals found in cannabis? You may have heard of endorphins (not to be confused with the Australian electronic musician), opiate-like chemicals made by our bodies that help us control pain and feel good after exercise. Well, the body also makes its own cannabis-like chemicals, called […]
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