Yale School of Medicine Offers Education and Help for Depression

Psychiatrists on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine will be at the State Capitol in Hartford October 6 for National Depression Screening Day (NDSD) to discuss treatment and research initiatives to better the lives of Connecticut residents living with depressive disorders.

The psychiatrists from the medical school and the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities at the Connecticut Mental Health Center at Yale will be at the Legislative Office Building.

An estimated 60 million adults suffer from a mood disorder. The cost to the nation is about $273 billion annually.

NDSD began 15 years ago as the first nationwide, community-based mental health screening program. NSDS Mental Health Screening is designed to call attention to mood and anxiety disorders on a national level, to educate the public and clinicians about the symptoms and effective treatments, to offer individuals the opportunity to be screened for the disorders, and to connect those in need of treatment to the mental health care system.

“We want to educate people about mood disorders,” said Hilary Blumberg, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale and director of the newly established Mood Disorders Research Program. “We want to tell them about the latest research and let them know they don’t need to suffer, that there are many new treatments available.”

“The Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities of the Connecticut Mental Health Center are unique,” Blumberg said. “They have enabled Yale researchers to make major advances in mood disorders and their treatment.”

The interdisciplinary mood disorders program is designed to bring together Yale’s unique excellence, both in basic and clinical mood disorders research, toward the long-term goal of translating preclinical research into improved methods to prevent, detect and treat mood disorders.

The psychiatrists’ expertise includes bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder,

post-and pre-partum depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, including persons who have been traumatized by the recent Hurricane Katrina or served in the war in Iraq.

The Yale physicians will be at the Capitol following the Connecticut Psychiatric Society’s 18th Annual Mental Illness Awareness Media Awards at an 8 a.m. breakfast in the Private Dining Room of the Legislative Office Building. The awards are co-sponsored by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Connecticut chapter, and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Winning articles or presentations on mental illness that originate in Connecticut will receive “Awards for Excellence.”

For more information about depression and other mental disorders, please call 1-800-ASK-YALE and/or go to the following website, www.mood.yale.edu.