BMC Duo Aims to Close Treatment Gap for People with Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that causes psychosis and can affect all areas of life.  People with schizophrenia typically have a 13–15-year reduction in life expectancy compared to the general population, with suicide and physical health disparities being leading contributors to this difference in mortality. Two researchers at BMC — Hannah Brown, MD, psychiatrist and the director of the Wellness and Recovery After Psychosis (WRAP) program, and her mentee Brittany Gouse, MD, MPH, psychiatrist and Assistant Director of WRAP – are working to identify strategies that can positively impact the course of psychotic illness and more holistically address treatment gaps for people with schizophrenia.   

 Brown and Gouse recently spoke with HealthCity about their work on identifying novel treatment approaches in an effort to better personalize early psychosis care for patients with schizophrenia.   

What inspired you to pursue psychiatric research on schizophrenia?      

Brown: I have long been fascinated by the brain and always knew I wanted to pursue a career studying brain disease. In medical school I rotated on an inpatient unit that specialized in caring for individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  This rotation was transformative, allowing me to see the differing perceptions of reality that individuals with psychosis could experience, and I appreciated not only the adversity patients with schizophrenia face, but also their remarkable resilience. For me, a career studying schizophrenia was the ideal combination of researching the brain-mind connection and understanding psychosis through the experiences of my patients.  

 Gouse: I initially was fascinated with the biology of schizophrenia as a neuroscience major in college. During my clinical training, I became passionate about working with individuals living with schizophrenia and their families. I constantly admire the resiliency of my patients – unfortunately, this resiliency is usually secondary to the significant adversity they face due to their illness. From Hannah, I learned how impactful a humanistic approach from the beginning of psychotic illness can be. I see research as an important tool to promote a more person-centered approach to schizophrenia care on a population-wide level.   

What is the goal of your current schizophrenia research project?   

We just received The Kempf Fund Award for Research Development in Psychobiological Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association (APA), recognizing our research on the causes and treatment of schizophrenia as a mentor – mentee pair. This award will help support the Advancing Coordinated Care Through Epidemiologic Studies in Schizophrenia (ACCESS) initiative which aims to not only improve outcomes in schizophrenia but also reduce disparities and inequities in patient access to evidenced-based psychosis care. As part of our study, we developed a dataset of over 200,000 healthcare encounters for more than 9,000 individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorder. In collaboration with the Clinical Data Warehouse at BMC, through ACCESS we have linked electronic medical record data to geocoded data and other sources in an effort to gain a comprehensive understanding of how individual and neighborhood-level sociodemographic factors have on adverse outcomes in early psychosis.    

How does your schizophrenia research impact patients?   

There is a critical need for new community-based interventions to not only reduce barriers to high quality psychosis care, but to allow us to learn how to better, more holistically meet the basic needs of our patients and families. Medications are often an important part of treatment for schizophrenia but are not the whole picture. Ultimately, we want to identify novel treatment approaches to further personalize early psychosis care to better meet the unique needs of our patients and their families.  

Learn more about Boston Medical Center’s research.