The case of a catatonic woman who woke up after 20 years could revolutionize psychiatry.

April Burrell is a woman who has been catatonic for over 20 years and has now awakened. Her case, in fact, could revolutionize psychiatry. April was an outgoing and outstanding student studying accounting at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, as summarized in a story in the Washington Post. But after a traumatic event when she was 21, the young woman suddenly developed psychosis and became lost in a constant state of visual and auditory hallucinations. Since then she could no longer communicate, bathe or care for herself. That, 20 years later, has changed… because April has come back to life.

April was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia, an often devastating mental illness which affects approximately 1% of the world’s population and can drastically alter the way patients behave and perceive reality.

“He was the first person I saw as a patient.” says Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who in 2000 was still a medical student when he met April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I have ever seen.”

They would pass almost two decades before their paths would cross again.. But in 2018, another chance encounter led to several medical discoveries reminiscent of a scene from “Awakenings,” the famous book and movie inspired by the awakening of catatonic patients treated by the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks.

Markx and colleagues discovered that, although April’s disease was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia.she also had lupus, an underlying, treatable autoimmune disease that was attacking her brain. After months of targeted treatments-and more than two decades trapped in her mind-April awoke. And now her case will be used for future research.