What works when it comes to mental illness?
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Our approach can make a real difference in the future of treatment and recovery for serious mental illness because we:

  • Train the next generation of mental health professionals using proven, multi-disciplinary programs.
  • Emphasize early identification and prevention along with top-notch interdisciplinary care, sustained recovery, and proven clinical treatment.
  • Apply leading-edge academic research to real-world mental health treatment.
  • Share our successes broadly across the state’s mental health community.
  • Foster partnerships among state, academic, and community mental health professionals.

At the Center for Excellence, we’re backed by outstanding psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, researchers, and other mental health professionals. We know what works. And we have what it takes to help move North Carolina’s mental health system from where it is today to a higher and more compassionate standard of care.

Specialized Programs

STEP, OASIS, Brushes with Life. The services we offer people with mental illness are at the core of all we do.

Training

At the Center, we take a multi-faceted approach to training mental health service providers.

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Myths View all myths

It's a chemical imbalance/brain disorder that you can test for.

Although we think schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental brain disorder that may involve chemical imbalances and possibly structural differences in the brain, we can't test for it at present. Researchers are exploring use of the human genome (map of genes both at the individual and larger group level), neuroimaging (highly detailed pictures of the brain), and electrophysiology (study of the brain's activity), to try to find indicators of illness. They are learning a great deal, but to date no markers that could be used as a test have emerged. (Source: OASIS Early Psychosis Toolkit)