On Mon, 18 Dec 1995 04:04:35 UTC,
Vampirehunter D <an24923 at anon.penet.fi > wrote:
>Hello
>>I'm applying to MD/PhD programs next year and I'm interested in the
>cellular and neurochemical causes of depression and the pharmacology of
>treatment. I am looking for excellent graduate programs that are focused
>on this area. I'd appreciate suggestions from people who know.
>>Thanks
>>Brad Mellema
>>____________________________________________________
>>mellema.brad at gene.com>
Brad:
Helping someone choose a good graduate program is a bit like helping
someone find a spouse - not an easy task - just ask Charles and Diana
<g>. And you didn't even say from where in the world you were
enquiring.
I don't have specific knowledge of the MD/PhD programs themselves, but
I'm pretty much aware of who are the leaders in research into
biological psychiatry and the related behavioral and brain sciences.
Just about anywhere you go in the world you will find someone working
on depression, but the overall world leader in biopsychiatric research
is Washington U. St. Louis. (The U. of Iowa has also done good work
in the past.) If you are looking at Europe, the counterpart would be
the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who have done a lot of work
with Washington U. in the past. The San Diego area also seems to be
the hot spot for the more basic neuroscience research.
Interestingly enough, the traditional medical schools on the East
Coast of the U.S. could well turn out to be very poor choices in
this area of medicine. While they do have some notable researchers,
schools like Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins are so far behind in
their overall understanding of the brain that they are holding up the
progress of medicine. (The brain is the key to almost ALL disease).
It's a good example of the universal fate of institutions - once an
institution becomes successful it ends up becoming reactionary and
a barrier to progress. (Theories of etiology, pathophysiology, and
therapeutics for the psychiatric disorders have undergone more radical
changes in the 19th and 20th centuries than in any other branch of
medicine.)
BTW, I was wondering why you sent this as an anonymous message as you
included an e-mail sig.
There has also been a major breakthrough in the treatment of the
depressive spectrum disorders in the last couple of years - the use
of a combination of dopamine and serotonin indirect agonists. I'm not
aware of any institution that has picked up on this yet except in
animal model research at Rutgers, though plenty of people know about
it.
AJR
