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2nd
Depression Center in U.S. opens, National
network launches
Newswise — For decades, cancer centers and
heart centers across the country have worked
together to improve patient care, set
national standards and foster new research
for all types of cancer and cardiovascular
disease.
Now it’s depression’s turn.
With the founding of a new Depression Center
at the University of Colorado Denver School
of Medicine, a national effort to link
centers focused on depression and bipolar
disorder has shifted into full gear.
The new Colorado center, on the Anschutz
Medical Campus in Aurora, CO, joins the
University of Michigan Depression Center –
which since 2001 has been the nation’s only
comprehensive center devoted to patient
care, research, education and public policy
in depression and related disorders.
The two centers — and new centers now being
planned at more than a dozen universities
across the country — will soon form a
National Network of Depression Centers.
The NNDC will make it easier for
psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers
and other mental health professionals to
share information and best practices, and to
team up for major projects.
In fact, the April 14 announcement of the
new Colorado center comes just before the
one-year anniversary of a meeting that
brought representatives from many of those
other universities together at the U-M
center. That meeting laid out the framework
for the NNDC, and launched a “foundation
phase” for the network that continues today.
Thanks to a generous donation from retired
investment banker George Wiegers, the U-M
Depression Center has launched a Center
Assistance Program that will help other NNDC
members launch their own Depression Centers.
Wiegers, a resident of Colorado, donated to
found the Colorado center, which will open
in August.
“Ever since we at Michigan launched our
center, we had a vision of a national
network that would help transform the way
depression and bipolar illnesses are
treated, studied and viewed in the United
States and around the world,” says John
Greden, M.D., the executive director of the
U-M Depression Center. “This is why we
initiated contact with a number of
universities that we knew had excellent
depression and bipolar programs, and the
desire to take steps to found a dedicated
center. Now that the network is forming,
we’re eager to share with them what we have
learned in our first seven years – and to
learn from them as well.”
Greden notes that cancer was once only
whispered about, rarely cured, and carried a
stigma that was similar to what depression
and bipolar disorder still carry.
But now that depression, bipolar disorder
and other conditions have been shown to be
just as “real” as cancer — rooted in
biological factors such as genetics and
brain chemistry — the new network will
continue the growing momentum to make that
stigma a thing of the past.
It will also work to find ways to help
people who have depression and bipolar
disorder get the best possible diagnosis and
treatment, including treatment for other
co-existing conditions such as addictions
and anxiety disorders.
Just as cancers were once rarely cured, and
now have become mostly survivable diseases
with the right detection and treatment,
depression and bipolar disorder may one day
reach the same state.
And since the World Health Organization has
named depression as one of the most
disabling human illnesses, and an estimated
19 million Americans suffer from it at any
given time, the effort to improve depression
care and understand it better through
research is much needed.
Later this year, the founding members of the
NNDC will meet again to adopt a charter for
the NNDC, and set priorities. As time goes
on, more centers will be welcome to join the
network according to membership conditions
that are being developed.
Although each center will be different
according to the organizational structure of
its home institution, the initial group of
attendees agreed that it would create
powerful momentum if standards are created
and that others try for the same
comprehensive approach that Michigan has
taken.
Greden, the Rachel Upjohn Professor of
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences at the
U-M Medical School, also notes that
philanthropic support will be crucial for
most of the centers, as funding for
facilities, start-up costs, professorships,
research pilot grants and special programs
may be needed.
The Michigan center has been fortunate to
attract donations that have ranged from a
few dollars up to $13 million in the years
since its founding, including gifts from the
late Mary and Edwin Meader, Waltraud
Prechter, Phil Jenkins, Tom and Nancy Upjohn
Woodworth and many others, including
Foundations. That support, and many other
gifts, allowed the U-M Health System to
complete in 2006 the new Depression
Center/Ambulatory Psychiatry facility in the
Rachel Upjohn Building on its East Medical
Campus.
Another factor that will be key to the
success of any depression center is the
cooperation of many individuals from
multiple areas of the center’s home
university, to leverage the expertise and
energy of many faculty and staff involved in
depression care, research and outreach.
At U-M, the Depression Center now has more
than 180 members, drawn from numerous
departments of the Medical School, as well
as the School of Public Health, the School
of Nursing, the School of Social Work, the
Dental School, the Division of Kinesiology,
and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
Moving forward, Greden says, the NNDC’s
participating centers will work together
with a common mission: “To improve the
quality, effectiveness, and availability of
depression and bipolar diagnosis, treatment,
and prevention so patients can lead better
lives.” Stated differently, he confidently
states, “Together, we will conquer these
disorders.”
For information:
The National Network of Depression Centers,
http://www.nndc.org
The University of Michigan Depression
Center,
http://www.depressioncenter.org
The University of Colorado Depression
Center,
http://www.uchsc.edu/som
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