to address a select group of mental health practitioners.

Dr. Warren J. Strittmatter, chief of the Neurology Division and director of Deane Laboratories at Duke University Medical Centre, N.C., will be the guest speaker at Thursday's Wilkie Memorial Lecture.

The lecture is hosted by the Bermuda Mental Health Foundation's honorary patron, Jennifer Masefield, and is part of the line-up for Mental Health Week.

The lecture is held annually during Mental Health Week in honour of the late Dick Wilkie, a staff psychiatrist at St. Brendan's Hospital, who was tragically murdered several years ago.

Dr. Strittmatter will address an invitation-only audience about schizophrenia -- a disorder characterised by delusions, hallucinations, disorganised thinking and speech and social withdrawal.

The disorder affects around one percent of any given population without regard to gender, geographical location, ethnic background or economic status.

"The Bermuda community is privileged to have someone of Dr. Strittmatter's calibre to speak,'' said a Bermuda Mental Health spokesperson.

"About 600 people in our community suffer from the debilitating effects of schizophrenia. It is a major form of mental illness in Bermuda, yet it is also one of the least understood forms of illness.'' Dr. Strittmatter is a leading researcher into a wide variety of neurological diseases including Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's Diseases. For more information on Thursday's lecture call 295-7933.

HEALTH HTH