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What if some psychiatric disorders are actually treatable autoimmune conditions? Introducing Rachel Aviv’s report on one woman’s stunning recovery from psychosis. Plus:
• Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” told the truth
• The baseball coach who stood up to ICE
• Fragrances of Presidents past
Letter from the Editor
When Mary was treated for cancer, the drugs also relieved her psychosis of twenty years. Her daughter Christine described her as a “psychological débutante.”Illustration by Emiliano Ponzi
Dear Reader,
For decades, a woman named Mary suffered from consuming delusions. Long-lost professional colleagues
were meddling with her life; someone was spying on her through a camera in the showerhead; her eldest daughter was conspiring against her and putting poison on her pizza. She took to barricading herself inside her house, and would spend years in and out of psychiatric inpatient care. And then, suddenly, just months after she began chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma, her symptoms of psychosis disappeared.
In this week’s issue, Rachel Aviv tells the story of Mary’s illness and astonishing recovery. Aviv, who has been writing about psychology in one way or another for The New Yorker for years, investigates a relatively new phenomenon: researchers and physicians are beginning to ask how many patients who present with what are typically considered psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, may actually be suffering from autoimmune conditions. One scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health tells Aviv that the figure may be between one and five per cent of schizophrenia patients. “Even one per cent ends up being almost a million people in the world who should be treated with a different kind of medicine,” he explains.
Mary’s story is inseparable from the experiences of her two daughters, Christine and Angie, whose lives were, for years, dominated by their mother’s impenetrable view of the world around her. They both speak with uncanny poise and insight about the struggles they faced in getting Mary the help she needed, the bonds they have formed, and the difficulty of reconciling the woman they know now with the person who raised them. As Angie explains, “I’m happy that my mom is normal now, that we can have a deep connection and I can share my life with her. And, at the same time, I want justice for the child who was hurt by that other mother.”
“When a person recovers from illness, it is usually seen as the end of the story,” Aviv writes. “But to become sane also represents a kind of narrative collapse, a confrontation with a personal history that is no longer recognizable.” Aviv continues the story, with intelligence, nuance, and empathy—and I’m excited to share it with you.
This week’s piece joins a rich archive of writing and reporting about psychiatry and mental illness in The New Yorker—Oliver Sacks’s years of brilliant contributions, Janet Malcolm’s classic reporting on Freud’s possible deceptions, Jerome Groopman on psychiatry’s dark past, Manvir Singh on how diagnostic labels have become identities, and much more.
As ever,
David Remnick
Editor, The New Yorker
Read the story »
More Top Stories
How Bad Is It?
Measles cases have hit their highest number since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S., in 2000. In total, according to the latest figures from the C.D.C., more than thirteen hundred people have had a confirmed case of measles this year; more than ninety per cent of those people were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.
How dangerous is this resurgence of the disease?
We reached out to Dhruv Khullar, a physician and a contributing writer. “It’s needlessly, frustratingly bad,” he told us via e-mail. “Not only is the virus circulating again but we’ve had more cases than in any year since the turn of the century—and the year is only half over!” Khullar points out that measles is one of the most contagious pathogens on the planet—even more so than chicken pox or COVID. “In unvaccinated communities, every infected person might pass the virus on to fifteen or more people,” he explained. “The current outbreak, which began in West Texas, has spread to dozens of states, and three people, including two children, have died—the country’s first measles deaths in a decade.
“It’s important to state plainly: virtually every case of measles is preventable through vaccination,” he continued. “But, instead of issuing forthright endorsements of the importance of immunization, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has offered mealy-mouthed guidance, muddying the waters with talk of vitamins and cod-liver oil. This outbreak is the logical endpoint of decades of anti-vaccine propaganda.”
This Week’s Caption Contest
Mark Thompson
Submit your best caption for this cartoon. The top three will be featured in next week’s magazine.
Puzzles & Games
P.S. “kamala IS brat.” A year ago today, the British singer-songwriter Charli XCX granted her imprimatur to Kamala Harris’s sudden campaign for President. This past weekend, the pop star got married in London. It’s been quite a year.
Ian Crouch contributed to today’s edition.
