British Columbia Schizophrenia Society
A Reason to Hope. The Means to Cope
Friends Enews
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Over the years, the BC Schizophrenia Society has developed and coordinated the best education and support programs for families coping with serious mental illness, as well as excellent school programs and public awareness resources. But we need your help to continue these efforts. Please consider clicking on the donate button at right or going to http://www.donate.bcss.org to help ensure that we can continue to improve the quality of life for people with mental illness and their families. Sincerely, David Halikowski Popular BCSS Program wins another award!BCSS is pleased to announce that our provincial Reach Out Psychosis High School Tour Program has won yet another award. It has been chosen to receive the Schizophrenia Society of Canada Initiatives/Programs of Excellence Award for 2008. The ReachOut Program is presented free of charge to schools throughout BC. The program brings in a rock band, slam poet and youth educators to help young people learn to spot and stop psychosis early. Video of the popular BCSS Program was also featured at the 6th International Conference on Early Psychosis October 22-24 in Melbourne, Australia. 
The ReachOut Team To view video highlights, go to http://www.reachoutpsychosis.com Twins can help find cause of SchizophreniaMedical researchers at the University of Western Ontario are looking for pairs of identical twins where one twin has schizophrenia and the other does not. Modern genetic technology has led to breakthroughs in the understanding of many diseases. Schizophrenia is known to have a genetic basis, so it is disappointing that genetic studies have not led to the identification of a single causal gene. Most schizophrenia researchers now agree that the disease is caused by a combination of abnormal genes rather than just one defective gene. It also appears that different genes may be affected in different families. This question of polygeneity/hetrogeneity makes identifying abnormal genes difficult. However, considering the time and effort put into identifying genes in schizophrenia, it is still surprising that no causal genes have been identified. One factor that may account for the lack of progress is that linkage and association studies do not identify so-called “epigenetic” or “non-sequence” abnormalities. The University of Western Ontario in London specializes in the study of epigenetic mechanisms in schizophrenia. In recent years they have focused on examining the role of epigenetic mechanisms using novel genome-wide experiments in pairs of identical twins. The work is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Finding research pairs is challenging, since twins must be identical and one must have schizophrenia. If you can assist in identifying possible subjects for this important research, please contact Dr. Richard O’Reilly (519) 455-5110, extension 47240 or email roreilly@uwo.ca Submitted by Dr. Richard O’Reilly and Dr. Shiva Singh, University of Western Ontario
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