Tiffany Martinez was in a freshman history class at the University of Southern Maine when she was startled by a female voice. She whipped around to see who it was. No one was there.
Martinez was just 17 and away from home for the first time. And while she didn't understand what was happening to her, she knew it was far more serious than homesickness.
Martinez, whose father suffers from schizophrenia, was experiencing the first signs of psychosis, a condition in which sufferers lose touch with reality. Most young people with psychosis spiral downward into delusion and disability, even as their families desperately try to find help.
This sort of decline was considered inevitable in schizophrenia. Without help, about 70% of people who experience a first psychotic break suffer a second round of psychosis within a year.
[For more of this story, written by Liz Szabo, go to http://www.usatoday.com/story/...al-illness/18183737/]
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