Bethany Yeiser

Bethany Yeiser (1981 – present) is a public speaker and mental health advocate on the topic of Schizophrenia, practicing violinist, and author of the memoir Mind Estranged, detailing her experiences as a homeless schizophrenic in Los Angeles, her gradual struggle and success with overcoming the disease, and her beliefs regarding the proper treatment of both mental illness and poverty.   She is the founder and acting President of the CURESZ Foundation, a Cincinnati-centered not-for-profit organization for spreading awareness about Schizophrenia and correcting misconceptions regarding the disease . She regularly gives talks at colleges, churches, and mental health functions regarding her experiences and advocating for the mentally ill.

Biography

Early life and development of Schizophrenia

Born in Chicago in 1981, Bethany Yeiser spent much of her life growing up in Ohio studying both music and the sciences. At the age of 13, she became a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Program playing violin, a skill that she would later make a focal point of many of her talks.   In 1999, the 18 year old was awarded a Presidential Scholarship and moved from Cincinnati to Los Angeles to begin studying Molecular biology at the University of Southern California, helping publish several research articles on multiple cellular topics.  During this time, she also helped start a not-for-profit with other students.   After returning from volunteer work in Nairobi, Kenya, and Nigeria, Yeiser began to become obsessive regarding the poverty she had seen on her trips, becoming delusional and experiencing strange thoughts and declining grades, ultimately failing out of the college in 2003, and, rendered homeless, began living on the streets of Los Angeles by the campus.  She cut off connections with her friends and family, started taking multiple expensive trips overseas using friends' money, and began eating food leftover by other students while sleeping in nearby abandoned buildings. During this period, she began to experience auditory hallucinations of children's voices instructing and judging her. Following four years of homelessness, she was found and detained by the police and, after undergoing a psychological evaluation, was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. She was returned home to her family in Ohio and made to undergo treatment, even though she did not believe she was ill.

Recovery

After undergoing treatment at an out-patient psychiatric unit for a year and attempting recovery on different medications, constantly struggling with side effects and with little real success , she was determined to be treatment-resistant by Dr. Henry Nasrallah in 2008, and was prescribed Clozapine, on which she gradually returned to a normal life, returning to college at the University of Cincinnati in 2009, with some initial success.  She showed considerable recovery on the medication, eventually graduating with honors and a degree in Molecular biology in 2011, at the same time becoming highly involved with on-campus life and speaking to many teachers and mental health advocates about her experiences.

Memoir and Ongoing Schizophrenia Advocacy

Soon after graduating, Yeiser began writing her memoir on her experiences with Schizophrenia and her recovery and success, publishing it in 2014 under the title Mind Estranged: My Journey From Schizophrenia and Homelessness to Recovery, and began appearing for interviews at various conferences on mental illness.  Shortly afterwards, she was invited to give a lecture at The University of Cincinnati. She began speaking about her experiences in lectures at the UC College of Law and to UC Medical Students.

Afterwards, she began making regular appearances on Mental Health Radio Programs, appearing on Sirus Radio’s Doctor Radio channel and on the IMHRO special Brainwaves. She began giving talks at multiple Mental Health functions throughout the country and speaking at churches in the Cincinnati area, working closely with The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), serving as the keynote speaker for their 2018 meeting in Dallas, Texas.

CURESZ

In 2016, working alongside her former psychiatrist Dr. Nasrallah, Yeiser created the Not For Profit Comprehensive Understanding Via Research and Education into Schizophrenia (CURESZ) Foundation, in order to spread awareness of and correct misinformation about Schizophrenia.  Her organization works primarily to address social stigma regarding those suffering from Schizophrenia, advocate broader usage of Clozapine for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, and attempting to have the mental illness reclassified as a Brain Disease. CURESZ's current objectives also include advocating for novel treatments for tardive dyskinesia, a side-effect of all anti-psychotics, highlighting individuals' stories of full recovery from schizophrenia, and advocating for mental health courts and treatment as an alternative to incarceration.

Published works

Mind Estranged: My Journey From Schizophrenia and Homelessness to Recovery- 2014

References

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