The 2016 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry: "The Future of Psychosis: Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder in 2040"

For the past 60 years, psychiatric research has searched for bad mothers and bad genes; neither was found. We are now entering an era in which psychiatry and neurology will merge. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder will be understood as encephalitides of the brain network which evolved most recently and which makes us uniquely human. Treatment will include more etiologically-specific medications; psychosocial supports; prevention for some cases; and a funding system that is not more thought-disordered than the individuals it is supposed to treat, as is presently the case.

E. Fuller Torrey, MD is the Associate Director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, and a Professor of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He was trained at Princeton, McGill and Stanford Universities, is the author of over 200 scientific publications and 20 books, including Surviving Schizophrenia, The Insanity Offense and American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System.