Before the onset of severe, treatment-resistant schizophrenia, Bethany Yeiser was a star honors student. She won a half-tuition scholarship to study biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Southern California in 1999 and managed to publish three papers as an undergraduate, with one appearing in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
Amid the initial success, a storm was brewing in Ms. Yeiser’s mind, threatening to unravel every facet of her life. After her grades slowly declined her first three years of college, she took a two-and-a-half-month trip to Africa. The journey became an obsession, making the isolated undergrad forget her studies.
