“Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight . . .”

The great English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is just one entry on a long list of composers, painters, playwrights, poets, novelists and other creative people who suffered from severe depression. Indeed, this is the subject of a best-selling book, “Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,” by Kay Redfield Jamison. But depression is hardly restricted to artists. The Mood Disorders Centre of Excellence at UBC Hospital in Vancouver estimates that some 500,000 British Columbians will suffer emotional distress, relationship problems and functional impairment due to depression. So the appointment of Dr. Allan Young as BC Leadership Chair in Depression Research is not only timely, but is an important step in efforts to better understand and treat the disease.

BC’s Leading Edge Endowment Fund (LEEF) provided $2.25 million for the Leadership Chair. The VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation committed to raise $2.25 million in matching funds. They not only delivered on their commitment, they exceeded it by more than $1 million through the leadership and generous financial contributions of Lloyd and Heather Craig of Vancouver, B.C., Credit Union Central of British Columbia, The Kelty Patrick Dennehy Foundation and other generous donors.

Few facilities in the world can equal the breadth and depth of The University of British Columbia’s brain research program.  With its Mood Disorders Centre, Brain Research Centre, the newly created Institute of Mental Health and Department of Psychiatry, it is truly “leading edge.” All that plus the Chair was why Dr. Young, an internationally respected scientist and clinician, was persuaded to come to UBC in 2005 from the School of Neurology, Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom.

“I’m particularly interested in the effect of stress hormones on brain neuro-transmitters,” says Dr. Young. “We know that stress precipitates depression, and we know that drug therapy for depression boosts certain brain chemicals such as 5-HT (serotonin). So it could be that stress impairs normal brain serotonin function, and that the anti-depressants normalize it. This has proven remarkably difficult to demonstrate, however. We have clues from laboratory experiments, where we modeled the increased stress hormones you get in depression. These appear to indicate that stress hormones interfere with the brain’s ability to boost 5-HT. So we’re looking at treating patients with not only with anti-depressants, but with therapies that will counteract the effect of the stress hormones.”

Another line of research Dr. Young and his colleagues are pursuing involves the impairment of cognitive function - - memory and the ability of the mind to reason and make decisions. “Stress hormones may be involved here as well. If you consider this in evolutionary terms, the reduction in some cognitive function during stress makes sense. After all, if you suddenly need to fight or escape, what you don’t need to do at that moment is learn something. You need to act. The problem is that if your stress hormones are raging away and you are chronically stressed, then you’re impaired longer term. That isn’t to say that cognitive impairment in depression is caused entirely by stress hormones. But when we blocked stress hormones in depressed subjects, we saw an improvement in some aspects of cognition.”

Of primary concern to scientists like Dr. Young is the stigma attached to mental illness. Here in BC, however, he’s been pleasantly surprised. “The battle against stigma is well underway here,” he observes. “This is thanks mainly to the families of people suffering mental illness and to those who have been ill themselves, going public with their experiences. After all, most people will have at least one episode during their lives; 25 per cent will have a severe one. We must continue educating people about mental illness and reducing the stigma associated with it.”

Reducing stigma, understanding the causes of mental ill-health and developing new treatments is a formidable list of challenges. “How these problems will be solved is unpredictable,” adds Dr. Young, “but as the poet Shelley also wrote, ‘Change is certain.’”

For more information about Dr. Young and Psychiatry at UBC, visit www.psychiatry.ubc.ca/IMH/Dr__Allan_Young.htm