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Alice Lorraine Hill was always driven to advocate for the mentally ill. It was a special interest of hers, that as a child immersed in it, I never fully recognized as being non-typical.

Mental illness was caused by a chemical imbalance. That was mom’s mantra. Going through her writings I have found that Dr. Carl C. Pfeiffer of New Jersey was her inspiration. He is considered a founder of Orthomolecular Psychiatry. It is of interest now as to how her values and preferences can be honored as her health deteriorates.

Mom has always referred to the determination by a researcher that schizophrenia was not in her dad’s family medical history. Mom enrolled in a study for the family medical records to be used for schizophrenia research. I now think Dr. Pfeiffer was involved in this study in some way. The records proved to be disqualified from the research because there were no diagnoses of schizophrenia. The medical records were not releasable to family per state law at that time, so mom never personally saw the records. She only had the letter of disqualification for the study as proof, which might yet be recovered in her personal records storage.