WGBH News

National Institute of Mental Health Doctor Barbara Lipska On Her Own Experience With Brain Tumors, Mental Illness And New Memoir

Jim Braude was joined by Barbara Lipska, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Mental Health, to discuss her experience with brain cancer which she describes in her new memoir “The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind.” 

WBUR Radio Boston

Neuroscientist Dr. Barbara Lipska Recounts Her Illness And Recovery

In 2015, multiple tumors in Neuroscientist Barbara Lipska's brain caused her to, in her words, go insane. Lipska's new book, "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind," looks back on that experience and explores what her firsthand knowledge can teach us about mental illness and how it affects the human brain.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD

Mad Scientist
The there-and-back-again tale of a brain researcher turned cancer patient.

Imagine a loved one, the rock of your family, displaying in short order the symptoms of mental illness and dementia; a well-adjusted, accomplished person turning obstreperous, mistrustful, and compulsive, confounded by basic arithmetic or a daily commute, and ruminating on imagined slights, mind racing obsessively. Then gradually these behaviors recede; equilibrium and faculties are recovered, and your relative is restored, albeit wearier and warier.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES ONLINE

Barbara Lipska on Deciphering and Destigmatizing Mental Illness

In January 2015, doctors informed Barbara Lipska that her melanoma had spread to her brain. With her frontal lobe compromised by tumors, Lipska soon began exhibiting schizophrenia and dementia-like symptoms. The subsequent eight weeks were a harrowing ordeal for Lipska, who was unaware of the affects her illness had on her brain, and her family.

NEW YORK POST

Brain cancer made this neuroscientist lose her mind

In June 2015, in the midst of immunotherapy treatment for brain cancer, neuroscientist Barbara Lipska was convinced the takeout pizza she’d recently eaten had been made out of plastic. “They are poisoning us!” she exclaimed to her husband, Mirek, after reflexively throwing up what she perceived as scraps of plastic bag in the bathroom. “I will never eat at that place again!”

NATIONAL BRAIN TUMOR SOCIETY

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: A Journey to the Brink and Back

Barbara Lipska, PhD, director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) — part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — and author of the recently published memoir, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, notes her fantastic medical team, devoted family, and stubborn optimism as important tools for treatment and recovery from metastatic brain cancer. 

DAILY MAIL

'I was a monster': Mental health scientist who beat stage 4 cancer describes shock at failing to recognize her own delusions brought on by the treatment that saved her life

Three years ago, Dr Barbara Lipska was probably going to die, but more importantly, she was convinced that the pizza place nearby was trying to rip off and sicken its customers by lacing their pies with plastic.
 

DANA FOUNDATION

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind

On a recent night at New York’s Rubin Museum of Art, neuroscientist Barbara Lipska, Ph.D., sat down with journalist Jake Halpern as part of the museum’s annual Brainwave series. The discussion gave audience members the unique opportunity to hear a lucid perspective of what it’s like to experience psychosis.
 

WASHINGTONIAN

I’m a Neuroscientist Who Studies Mental Illness. Here’s What Happened When I Lost My Own Mind.

I've studied mental illness my entire career. Yet when I began my descent into the very same sort of madness that I'd researched, I had no idea what was happening. This is the story of my journey into insanity—and back. 

DAILY BEAST

A Neuroscientist Lost Her Mind From Cancer. She’s Not Alone.

She’d survived breast cancer and melanoma. Then her hand disappeared.

KATU 2 ON YOUR SIDE

THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND

In January 2015, Barbara Lipska—a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness—was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers.

Public Radio Tulsa “Medical Mondays”

"The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery"

Our guest on ST Medical Monday is Dr. Barbara Lipska, Director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she studies mental illness and human brain development. 
She joins us to discuss her engaging and disturbing new memoir, "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery."

MIDDAY ON WNYC

A Neuroscientist's Journey to Madness and Back

In 2015, Barbara Lipska—a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness—was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe began shutting down and she began exhibiting symptoms of dementia and schizophrenia. 

The Scientist

A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Madness

After I was diagnosed with brain cancer and started to lose my mental health, the importance of my job came into clear focus.

TONIC

Brain Tumors Caused This Neuroscientist To Lose Her Mind
"I became a monster, basically, in my own body, with my own personality exaggerated to the point it became a caricature of myself."

iNews The Essential Daily Briefing

'The neuroscientist who lost her mind'
She was sitting at her desk at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland – where she has spent many years studying the brain, in particular the effects of schizophrenia – when she noticed that her right arm seemed to disappear from her line of vision entirely whenever it strayed to the right-hand corner of her computer keyboard.

NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

'The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind' Returns From Madness
One spring morning in 2015, Barbara Lipska got up as usual, dyed her hair and went for a jog in her suburban Virginia neighborhood.
But when she returned from a much longer than expected run, her husband Mirek was completely taken aback.

The Times - Sunday Times

Neuroscientist Barbara K Lipska: how my understanding of the mind changed when I developed a brain tumour
The expert on mental illness on the brain tumours that rendered her temporarily insane

BBC World Service

I Studied the Brain but Lost My Mind
Barbara Lipska is a Polish born neuroscientist who carries out research at a bank of one thousand brains. 
But nothing prepared her for the challenge of her own brain going wrong. 
She had eighteen tumours and says she became a monster.

Science

A neuroscientist’s battle with brain cancer prompts a personal reflection on identity and the disease process
In The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, Barbara Lipska shares the story of her firsthand experience with metastatic brain cancer. In doing so, she provides readers the opportunity to foster a “sense of connection with others who suffer” and to combat continued stigmatizing of mental illness. 

BookPage

THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND
Sanity unraveled
The mind is a precious thing to lose. Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, learned this terrifying truth firsthand.