Manic depression answers likely

Press, 15 September 1988, Page 5

Manic depression answers likely

By

DEBORAH MCPHERSON

Researchers were close to uncovering which genes were responsible for manic depression, said a distinguished visiting psychiatrist in Christchurch yesterday. Professor Eugene Paykel, the New Zealandborn head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, said the treatment of depression had led to more answers about the causes of depressive disorders. New techniques for studying DNA, a mechanism by which hereditary features of an individual are passed on, had led to

clues to the chemical causes of manic_ depression, he said. Some encouraging signs in the active, chemical research at Cambridge University had shown that the disorder might be linked to two different chromosomes not yet isolated, which might show if a depressive disorder was inherited.

The hereiitary element was not large but the research might well give clues as to the chemical causes of manic depression and other forms of depression, said Professor Paykel. Manic depressives made up about 10 per

cent of all people who got depressed. They suffered long, persistent changes of mood.

About 5 per cent of the population would probably suffer from some form of mild depression that was more than the normal passing phenomenon, although not necessarily a severe disorder.

Professor Paykel is in New Zealand as a Trust-bank-sponsored visiting professor of medicine. His speciality in psychiatry is in research into depression.

He gave several lectures at a psychiatrists’ conference in Christchurch last week