Lunch @UCSF with Brandon Chuang & Joshua Woolley – Schizophrenia, from both sides

Lunch @UCSF with Brandon Chuang & Joshua Woolley – Schizophrenia, from both sides

After college when Brandon Chuang decided to gain some research experience in the laboratory of schizophrenia expert Joshua Woolley, he had no inkling that several months later he would develop full-blown psychosis himself. His illness was challenging, not just for Chuang, but for his coworkers, his family and for Woolley, who had deep training as a clinician and a scientist, but no experience as a workplace supervisor dealing with issues arising from mental illness.

In this lunch session, you will hear Chuang’s frank, first-person account of the psychotic symptoms that clouded his judgment, and how Woolley and fellow lab members coped with this unexpected crisis. Interspersed will be Chuang’s views on the strategies that helped him cope—including stints with an improv theatre group, an approach to psychosis he is researching formally at Berkeley—as well as Woolley’s own work on oxytocin as a potential therapeutic agent for schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses.

This session offers a unique, personal perspective on mental illness and the stigma that continues to surround these disorders.

#schizophrenia

Registration is required.