March 11, 2006
Third Annual Palm Beach Dinner Dance and Scientific Symposium
Palm Beach, Florida

View summaries of symposium presentations

NARSAD’s third annual Palm Beach “Sunshine from Darkness” gala and symposium took place on Saturday, March 11, and, by all accounts, were a tremendous success, exceeding the organizers’ goals for the events.

The gala dinner dance, which took place at the historic Mar-a-Lago Club, raised $800,000 for NARSAD, breaking previous records. The event honored CNN anchor Anderson Cooper for his frank and open reporting on depression. Legendary journalist Mike Wallace was also in attendance and introduced Mr. Cooper, noting that the battle to eradicate the stigma of mental illness will hopefully soon be a thing of the past. Mr. Cooper’s moving acceptance speech focused on his older brother Carter’s suicide 17 years ago. Still struggling to understand why his brother decided to end his life, Mr. Cooper’s remarks touched everyone in the room.

Chairs of the event included Karen and Jerry Callaghan, Konrad Kent Keesee, Sasha Lickle, Dorothy Sullivan, Sallie and Alex van Rensselaer, and Mary and Mike Wallace. Mar-a-Lago’s beautiful new ballroom was filled with a mixture of fresh springtime buds intermingled with butterflies. The evening’s entertainment was inspired by the butterfly theme, with acrobats from New York’s AntiGravity performance group emerging from cocoons to perform a series of gravity- and muscle-defying floor excercises.

Earlier in the day, a free, public symposium on mental health research took place at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, with more than 700 people in attendance. The morning symposium featured presentations by NARSAD-supported scientists, including Wade Berrettini, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, who discussed his study of nicotine dependence in people with psychiatric illnesses; Joseph R. Calabrese, M.D., of Case Western Reserve University, who talked about developments in the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder; John P. O’Reardon, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, who shared research on new therapies for treatment-resistant depression; and A. John Rush, Jr., M.D., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, who discussed new approaches for treating depression. Dr. Berrettini also served as moderator. To view summaries of the symposium presentations, click here.