Michigan Commits to Build Multifocus Depression Center

The University of Michigan’s first-of-its-kind comprehensive depression treatment center will be able to complete construction of its new home by 2006, thanks in part to a $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The grant, matched by funds from the University of Michigan Health System, will allow the construction of an entire floor of research space in the university’s Depression Center and ambulatory psychiatry facility in Ann Arbor.

“The entire Depression Center team welcomes this recognition, financial help, and additional space,” said John Greden, M.D., executive director of the center and chair of the University of Michigan’s department of psychiatry. “All are necessary to move research forward and make advances in scientific discovery, diagnosis, and treatment. The NIH’s decision to fully fund our proposal signals the importance of this effort to the nation’s health,” Greden said in a written statement.

Greden is also chair of APA’s Council on Research.

The depression center’s goal was to bring together in one facility individuals who are expert not only in research and treatment, but education and public policy as well. The facility opened in 2001, and researchers at the center now have federal and foundation grant funding in excess of $13 million to study all aspects of depression, from genetics and brain chemistry to treatment outcomes.

The new grant will allow the center to consolidate clinical research in one location instead of many facilities spread across several locations. The new space is slated to have a soundproof sleep lab; light-therapy, nutrition, and physiology labs; computing facilities; a translational genetics lab; patient assessment rooms; and a state-of-the-art telemedicine facility that will allow all of the university’s mental health specialists to consult with physicians and psychologists in rural areas, as well as other cities.

“Too many of the research areas that have helped to advance our understanding and treatment of depression have been developing separately, in silos that interfere with the pace of future breakthroughs,” Greden explained. The new facility, he said, will be a “place for cross-fertilization and multidisciplinary effort that will bring various research strategies together as never before.”

The new space, totaling around 24,000 square feet, will be organized into six research modules:

• Screening, assessment, and registry, where specialists will develop and implement new strategies and technologies for evaluating research participants, storing their information in secure registries, and determining their suitability for various clinical studies.

• Neurobiology, where researchers will conduct clinical research on the interplay in depressive disorders among genetics, stress and neuroendocrinology, brain activity (revealed through neuroimaging), sleep and chronophysiology, and other biological factors.

• Behavioral sciences and cognitive neurosciences, where studies will focus on the emotional, cognitive, social, psychological, substance abuse, and psychotherapeutic aspects of depression. Experts from many of these disciplines are expected to interact in unprecedented ways with scientists studying the biological underpinnings of depression.

• Clinical investigations, where new treatments for depressive illnesses will be tested through clinical trials of new medications, new approaches to individual and group therapy, and interventions ranging from light therapy to deep brain stimulation. Clinical trial participants will come to this area for outpatient visits.

• Biomedical informatics, which will act as the “nerve center” of the new facility. This area will include computing facilities that will allow researchers to collect and process huge amounts of research data and medical images and to develop new computer-based research tools.

• Health services and outcomes, where researchers will try to close the gap between “what we know and what we do” in treating depressive disorders. Despite new knowledge about effective screening, diagnosis, and treatment, many people never get the full range of care that could help them. By partnering with primary care clinicians and other specialists across Michigan and northern Ohio, University of Michigan researchers will have a large network for studying patterns of care and methods for improving care.

In all, Greden said, the new facility will ensure that depression research at the University of Michigan draws from the strengths already present in the Depression Center team, adds to these strengths, and brings researchers together in new ways.

More information about the center is posted online at www.med.umich.edu/depression. ▪