Schizophrenia Daily News Blog

Scientific Round Table Discussion on Mental Health

12th Annual Staglin Music Festival for Mental Health
Scientific Round Table Discussion
September 16th, 2006

By Demian Rose, MD, PhD

As a reporter for schizophrenia.com, I recently had the pleasure of being invited to witness a round table of prominent scientists in the fields of mental and physical health. These scientists were brought together by the Staglin family to encourage constructive dialogue about the current state of scientific progress, as well as earnest collaboration between disciplines traditionally considered disparate entities. I have summarized what I felt were the major themes and action items to come out of this meeting.

Themes of Discussions at the Round Table Discussion:

1. The need for cross-discipline integration between psychiatry and other disciplines (especially those related to primary health outcomes, e.g. internal medicine, neurology, and cardiology) is becoming larger, as the field genetics becomes more advanced. The primary reason for this fact is that most genetics studies done at present define phenotypes (i.e., expressions of genetic outcome) in ways that are specific to their field of inquiry and therefore translate poorly into other fields.

2. The current disparity between the potential and the reality of clinical care is large. One way to help rectify this would be to directly link income-generating mechanisms of care (e.g. surgeries and other procedures) with more labor-intensive primary care and research activities.

3. Psychiatry could learn from the success of integrating behavioral change into treatment planning in many other primary care fields.

4. All branches of medicine need to move towards a "multi-specialist" perspective because advances in molecular biology and genetics have demonstrated that many disorders – e.g. depression, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes – do not respect the commonly defined boundaries of health care delivery.

5. Federal funding sources, e.g. the National Institutes of Health, are much more likely to support creative projects when those projects have been put forth by a well-organized and eclectic group, as opposed to a single investigator, even if that investigator has a "name".

Participants:

All of the scientists listed below were selected for their extensive experience in clinical research.

Eva Anton, PhD
Neuroscientist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Samuel Barondes, MD
Psychiatrist from the University of California at San Francisco

Louann Brizendine, MD
Psychiatrist from the University of California at San Francisco

Tyrone Cannon, PhD
Psychologist from the University of California at Los Angeles

M. Bridget Duffy, MD
Internist from the Heart-Brain Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio

Paul Keck, MD
Psychiatrist from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio

Susan McElroy, MD
Psychiatrist from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio

Mary O’Brien, PhD
Psychologist from the University of California at Los Angeles

Marc Penn, MD
Cardiologist from the Heart-Brain Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio

Sophia Vinogradov, MD
Psychiatrist from the University of California at San Francisco

Daniel Weinberger, MD (Chair)
Psychiatrist and Neurologist from the National Institute of Mental Health, Washington, DC

James Young, MD
Cardiologist from the Heart-Brain Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio