Woke

The line between mental and physical issues will always be blurred because the brain is part of the body. Every now and then we get a stark reminder of this as we did in the case of April Burrell, who went from being an outgoing, straight-A student to being catatonic. It took decades, but April’s doctors eventually “discovered that although April’s illness was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, she also had lupus, an underlying and treatable autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain.
After months of targeted treatments — and more than two decades trapped in her mind — April woke up.” WaPo (Gift Article): A catatonic woman awakened after 20 years. Her story may change psychiatry. Now, “scientists around the world [are] finding that underlying autoimmune and inflammatory processes may be more common in patients with a variety of psychiatric syndromes than previously believed.” Like I always say, there’s a clear mind/body connection: The neck.