Treatment and Recovery In order to treat her disease, she was given an assortment of different steroids, infusions, and plasmapheresis. She made a full recovery without suffering long-term brain damage.
Who is Susannah Cahalan and how did she become famous?
Who is Susannah Cahalan? Susannah Cahalan is an American author and journalist, best known for her memoir, 'Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness,' which chronicled her traumatic experience while undergoing treatment for a rare autoimmune disease. A 'Washington University' alumna, she currently works for the tabloid 'New York Post.'
What disease does Susannah Cahalan have?
Susannah Cahalan (born January 30, 1985) is an American journalist and author, known for writing the memoir Brain on Fire, about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. She has worked for the New York Post.
What happened to Susannah Cahalan in'brain on fire'?
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix. In Netflix's new movie, Brain on Fire, Susannah Cahalan (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a writer who suddenly begins to go through a series of strange experiences — hallucinations, erratic behavior, being in a trance — until she suffers a seizure and ends up in the hospital, waking up with no memory of the previous month.
What happened to Catherina Cahalan?
Cahalan was leading a normal life and was blessed with a flourishing career until she began displaying symptoms that appeared to be a psychological disorder. Unfortunately, she was misdiagnosed. Her condition remained a mystery until Dr. Souhel Najjar identified it as a neurological illness.
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What is the treatment for Brain on Fire?
To date, the most effective treatments for anti-NDMAR encephalitis are a combination of medications that target the immune system in different ways, including corticosteroids, intravenous immune globulin (IVIg), and plasma exchange, followed by other longer-acting chemotherapies to suppress the activity of the ...
How long did it take Susannah Cahalan to get diagnosed?
Discovered just two years before Cahalan's diagnosis, the disease was only beginning to gain wider clinical awareness. It took a month for Cahalan to be properly diagnosed and well over a year for her to return to her baseline. But she made a full recovery.
What is the treatment for anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis?
Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is an immunotherapy responsive disorder (5). First-line treatment includes immunotherapy agents such as steroids, plasma exchange procedures (PLEX), and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), and the second-line therapy includes B-cell depleting agents such as rituximab (6).
Where was Susannah Cahalan hospitalized?
One night at her boyfriend's apartment, she had a grand mal seizure and woke up in St. Luke's Hospital. Cahalan describes the hospital neurologist as dismissive, and she received her first of multiple misdiagnoses: alcohol withdrawal.
How do you get someone out of a catatonic state?
Doctors usually treat catatonia with a kind of sedative called a benzodiazepine that's often used to ease anxiety. Another treatment option is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It sends electrical impulses to the person's brain through electrodes placed on their head.
How old is Susannah Cahalan?
37 years (January 30, 1985)Susannah Cahalan / Age
Do patients recover from Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis?
According to the same study, 80% of patients with Anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis eventually have partial or complete recovery. Some patients took up to 18 months to recover.
Is anti-NMDA curable?
Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is a potentially treatable form of psychiatric illness that is illuminating our understanding of the neuropathophysiology involved in some individuals who present with symptoms of psychosis.
What is the treatment for autoimmune encephalitis?
Treatment of autoimmune encephalitides includes immunotherapy, either corticosteroids or intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIG). When the condition is thought to be due to a cell-surface or synaptic protein antibody, IVIG, corticosteroids or plasmapheresis are initiated in various sequences and combinations.
How do you get Brain on Fire disease?
Summary: A rare autoimmune disorder popularized by the autobiography and movie “Brain on Fire” is triggered by an attack on NMDA receptors. The disease occurs when antibodies attack NMDA receptors in the brain, leading to memory loss, intellectual changes, seizures, and death.
What is the main cause of encephalitis?
Encephalitis is most often due to a virus, such as: herpes simplex viruses, which cause cold sores (this is the most common cause of encephalitis) the varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and shingles. measles, mumps and rubella viruses.
How much of Brain on Fire is true?
It sounds like something out of a soap opera, but it's a true story, based on the memoir of the same name by Cahalan herself, chronicling what she went through when she was diagnosed with a condition called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.
Who is Susannah Cahalan?
Brain on Fire. Spouse (s) Stephen Grywalski (m. 2015) Susannah Cahalan (born January 30, 1985) is an American journalist and author, known for writing the memoir Brain on Fire, about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. She has worked for the New York Post.
What did Rosenhan's work demonstrate?
Rosenhan's work demonstrated that staff working at psychiatric hospitals, including psychiatrists, could be easily misled to diagnose schizophrenia when individuals were perfectly sane and reported the mistreatment of patients in these facilities.
Who was the participant in the research that involved test subjects ceasing to present symptoms of mental illness after admission to the
Cahalan was, herself, a participant in the research which involved test subjects ceasing to present symptoms of mental illness after admission to the hospital and then observing the manner in which they were treated by staff at the institutions.
What is David Rosenhan's book about?
Book about David Rosenhan. In 2019, Cahalan's second book was published, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness. In the work she accuses prominent psychologist David Rosenhan of fabricating the results of seminal research published in the journal Science. Rosenhan's work demonstrated that staff working ...
Mysterious Illness
Susannah awakes in the emergency room, Stephen by her side. When she sees a homeless man vomiting a few feet away and a bloody man handcuffed to a gurney, surrounded by police officers, she demands to be moved to another room. The doctor agrees, and she’s filled with a triumphant sense of power.
Susannah Cahalan: Diagnosis at Last
Najjar begins a series of bedside tests to give Susannah Cahalan a diagnosis. Susannah responds monosyllabically, with a significant lisp. Her reflexes are bad, her pupils don’t constrict properly, and she can’t touch her hand to her nose. She walks stiffly, with delays between steps, angling toward her left side.
Overview
Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis
Susannah’s disease manifested in 2009 when she was just 24 years old. It began with sensory issues which she described in her article, "My Mysterious Lost Month of Madness", as experiencing the world “brighter, louder, more painful.” She also began experiencing numbness in the whole left side of her body, and paranoid hallucinations of bed bug bites. Concerned by the numbness, Cahalan sought out a neurologist who ran multiple inconclusive tests including two n…
Personal Life and Career
As Susannah was a journalist for the New York Post before she became ill, her editor suggested that she write about her disease and how it impacted her. As she recovered from her brain illness, she decided to bring the same journalistic approach to writing her memoir, using fact and research as the foundation for her story. According to Cahalan, it was a "very dissociative process" to write about her experience with the disease. She had to recreate the time-line of everything th…
Film Adaptation
Netflix released a feature film based on Susannah Cahalan’s memoir, Brain on Fire. The movie, which shares the title of the book, was directed by Irish filmmaker, Gerard Barrett. Chloe Grace Moretz stars in the film as she portrays Susannah Cahalan. The film chronicles the events leading to Cahalan’s misdiagnosis, hospitalization, and eventual diagnosis and recovery.
Book about David Rosenhan
In 2019, Cahalan's second book was published, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness. In the work she accuses psychologist David Rosenhan of fabricating the results of seminal research published in the journal Science. Rosenhan's work demonstrated that staff working at psychiatric hospitals, including psychiatrists, could be easily misled to diagnose schizophrenia when individuals were perfectly sane and repor…
Awards
Through the years, she has been awarded numerous academic fellowships. These include the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism from Yale University, the Richardson Seminar in the History of Psychiatry from Cornell in 2020, and the Spitzer Memorial lecture from Columbia University in 2020.
See also
• Souhel Najjar
• Brain on Fire (film)