A new home for research and care aimed at helping people with depression, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, has opened at the University.
Last week the first patients entered the new $41 million Rachel Upjohn Building, on the U-M Health System east medical campus, for appointments with specialists who treat adults and children for everything from depression and bipolar disorder (also called manic depression) to alcoholism and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The U-M Depression Center national and scientific advisory boards met last week in the building’s new conference facilities to plan strategy for creating a national network of centers focused on depression and bipolar disorder.
The U-M center was founded in 2001 as the first of its kind in the nation and now makes its home in the Upjohn Building, along with many of the treatment and research personnel of the Medical School Department of Psychiatry and other schools across the University.
Over the coming weeks many psychiatry and addiction specialists will move their programs to the building, where they will be able to cooperate on research like never before, and conduct clinical trials with the help of volunteers from the community. The Addiction Treatment Service also will move to the building, bringing it physically closer to the Depression Center and enabling new studies of the co-occurrence of these problems. Many faculty members also will continue to work in research laboratories in other areas of the main Medical Campus.
The general public can see the building and learn about all that will take place within its 112,500 square feet at a free open house from 1-4 p.m. Nov. 12. More information is available at www.depressioncenter.org.
