A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research (opens in new tab)

Behavior genetics research on schizophrenia has been going on since I was born, in other words since long before most Hacker News participants were born. The crucial issue in the research, mentioned in the article kindly submitted here, is that any one gene only has a small effect on risk for schizophrenia. "Dr. Lander cautioned that each variant accounts for only a tiny portion of the risk of developing schizophrenia. 'It shouldn’t be used for a risk predictor,' he said." Behavior geneticists, such as those I know locally,[1] and the pioneer of behavior genetic research on schizophrenia[2] hope that large-scale genomic studies of the kind that are now possible will help tease out how gene differences between one individual and another interact with environmental influences to increase or decrease risk for schizophrenia, which should lead eventually to better treatments and better prevention strategies, through deeper fundamental understanding of the disease. It is plain that environmental factors matter too, because sometimes identical ("monozygotic") twins are discordant for schizophrenia.[3] This research path will be slow and frustrating, precisely because it is well known already that no one gene has strong effect, and no particular gene acts without interaction with the environment, but this kind of fundamental research is indeed necessary to refine the diathesis-stress model[4] of the development of schizophrenia.

[1] http://www.psych.umn.edu/research/areas/pib/

[2] http://www.psych.umn.edu/people/facultyprofile.php?UID=gotte...

[3] http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/spiro.html

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01564274#page-1

[4] http://college.cengage.com/psychology/bernstein/psychology/6...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632355/

AFTER EDIT: I'm still learning the rules about informed, thoughtful discussion here after 2073 days of participation as a registered user on Hacker News, so I'd be glad to understand what someone considered objectionable about this comment. I was just surfing by this comment to add a link emailed to me by Irving Gottesman, the prominent schizophrenia researcher who was mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book A Beautiful Mind. That link discusses the study in the journal Nature published today.

http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=2068

This is a huge donation for the Broad and probably equals all their previous fundraising. I think a lot will ask if it's too much to one institute or too little to solve the problem, but overall I'm very excited. Biology is changing very fast right now, and it's probably the right time for a big new push. Psychiatric disease and brain research is the next big frontier and private funding like this allows places to take risks they otherwise couldn't on grants. The Broad Institute is the best genomics institute by far, albeit a little light on the clinical side. The money will not be wasted on anything hokey. All that said though, there is a large chance that it still won't be enough to solve a very tough set of problems.

I'm happy that they're putting money into developing better diagnostic methods for mental disorders, because, frankly, the existing tools are terrible.

After 9 years of misdiagnoses by several different doctors, earlier this year one astute doctor was able to uncover that I had bipolar 2 and not unipolar depression or SAD. I had mixed feelings about it (ironic) but I was put on the correct medications and they have made a world of difference. In fact, I read that it can often take close to a decade, on average, to diagnose types of bipolar properly, because doctors and patients simply don't communicate well. Any tools that shorten that time gap would benefit individuals and society as a whole.

I was initially worried when the headline said "psychiatric" research, but was pleasantly surprised when I read the article and found out that what they really meant was neuro-biology and its genetic origins, not study of patient behavior. The "top-down" approach has failed psychiatry (or more accurately, psychology) for half a century. I'm glad to see the bottom-up approach (i.e. starting with genes and cells and then working your way up to thoughts/feelings/behaviors) taking the lead.

It is a wonderful donation, but I do wish that philanthropists would spend money on lobbying congress and The President to increase science budgets by the billions of dollars per year. Money could also be donated to those running in congress who are favorable to increasing the science budget of NIH, NSF.

This article is a enlightening counterpart to the 'emerging neuroscience' chorus, who would have us believe that a full model of consciousness and the brain is just around the corner. That those trying treat schizophrenia haven't a clue what causes the onset, and why certain drugs are effective tells me that we really are at the stage of the absolutely primitive models of brain activity.

I'm glad to see more money spent on these issues, hopefully we will have some breakthroughs soon.

While the current medications surely do help a lot of people, I've watched really smart friends devolve into zombies while on some of them. People I've known for 15 years who are definately not the same people they were when they started. They themselves don't notice the change, of course, because it happens slowly.

We really need better options with less severe personality change side-effects.

An interesting article on the U.S. Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program was published today. Wonder if this money is being well spent! https://thewinnower.com/papers/a-critical-examination-of-the...

Very good episode on psychiatric research: http://www.londonreal.tv/episodes/rick-doblin-mdma-therapy

(and raising money, and all stuff in between)

I applaud any efforts being made in the mental illness space. It's difficult because it can't be "seen" and anything we can do to make diagnosis as objective as possible would be great.

ok, ok I'll take the bait...

That's crazy!

This is a great donation, that seems to be going to exactly the right place. However, it's a little unfortunate that Mr. Stanley only started donating to this cause after a member of his own family was affected.