This is a post from our sister site, TheGrindstone.
Keris Myrick is the successful chief executive of a non-profit organization in Southern California, where she oversees a staff of three dozen people. She also suffers from schizoaffective disorder, which is similar to schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. But instead of adding stress to her life, her doctors say her job actually helps keep her sane.
Myrick’s story was the subject of a surprising, inspiring story this weekend in the New York Times. Her decision to pursue meaningful, even difficult, work has helped prompt doctors to reconsider their assumptions about how mental illness should be managed. Myrick is part of an ongoing study of high-functioning people with schizophrenia, including two doctors, a lawyer, and Myrick. “It’s just embarrassing,” Dr. Stephen R. Marder, one of the authors of the study, told the paper. “For years, we as psychiatrists have been telling people with a diagnosis what to expect; we’ve been telling them who they are, how to change their lives — and it was bad information” for many of them. More »