CURESZ Foundation

The CURESZ Foundation provides education about underutilized and cutting-edge medications and treatments for schizophrenia. This includes information about the unique medication clozapine, which is the only FDA-approved medication for cases of treatment resistance. It also includes long-acting injectable medications (LAIs) which are convenient for persons with schizophrenia and effective at preventing relapse and rehospitalization. CURESZ features stories of "schizophrenia survivors" who are not just recovered, but thriving despite a past diagnosis of schizophrenia. Through our Survivor’s stories, we demonstrate that full recovery from schizophrenia is possible today. The CURESZ Foundation also seeks to correct many misconceptions about schizophrenia, and to find practical and creative ways to eliminate the stigma attached to it. CURESZ educates students, mental health professionals, patients, families, and the general public through various media platforms. CURESZ is particularly interested in educating teenagers and college-age young adults about the early warning signs of schizophrenia, which often do not start until adolescence or the early 20’s. We reassure students that serious mental illness is a medical disorder like hypertension or diabetes and that there should be no reluctance in taking a medication for any illness, including schizophrenia. The CURESZ Board of Trustees includes well-known psychiatrists, lawyers, parents of mentally ill persons, and other professionals from around the country. Bethany Yeiser (a UC alum) serves as President of the CURESZ Foundation, and Dr. Nasrallah as Executive Vice President and Scientific Director. The Foundation Officers also include a Secretary and a Treasurer.

CURESZ envisions a future where schizophrenia and related psychoses are widely accepted as neurobiological brain conditions, and can be prevented, treated or cured, with restoration of wellness and full functional recovery. CURESZ has several major goals: To support a multifaceted educational campaign to correct the misperceptions about schizophrenia among the general public, using multiple media platforms To pursue a relentless campaign to eliminate the stigma of serious psychiatric brain disorders like psychosis and to equate them with other neuropsychiatric disorders like Parkinson’s Disease, Huntington’s Disease or stroke To raise charitable contributions to support biopsychosocial research that will accelerate the prospects of prevention or a cure for schizophrenia and related psychoses To inspire hope among patients and their families about the increasing prospects of remission and recovery through new treatments that parallel the momentous advances in understanding the neurobiology of psychotic disorders To start a dialog among psychiatrists and other mental health professionals about shedding the term “schizophrenia” and to replace it with a scientifically more accurate name, not associated with decades of misleading notions and stigma To vigorously address the grave injustice of criminalizing medically ill patients who have brain disorders with behavioral pathology, incarcerating them in jails and prisons instead of treating them in a hospital.