March 9 & 10, 2007
Fourth Annual "Sunshine from Darkness" Dinner Dance and Scientific Symposium
Palm Beach, Fla.

The annual Palm Beach event kicked off Friday with a memorable evening of dinner and dancing at the Mar-a-Lago Club. This year’s honoree was legendary talk show host Larry King for his enormous contribution in bringing awareness and understanding about depression and bipolar disease to his CNN television show, "Larry King Live". Over the course of his illustrious career, he has interviewed numerous celebrities such as Marie Osmond, Patty Duke and Mariel Hemingway, in order to bring these sensitive topics out in the open. Previous honorees at this event have included Nobel laureates John F. Nash, Jr., Ph.D., acclaimed mathematician and the subject of the book and film A Beautiful Mind; James D. Watson, M.D., Ph.D., renowned for his research on the structure of DNA; and most recently, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, who created a week-long series on depression that aired in early 2005.

A free NARSAD scientific symposium on the latest developments in mental health research was held at the Palm Beach County Convention Center on March 10. The symposium, open to the general public, was moderated by Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health. A past member of NARSAD’s Scientific Council and recipient of NARSAD’s Distinguished Investigator Award, Dr. Insel initiated some of the first treatment trials for obsessive-compulsive disorder using the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) class of medications.

Symposium topics and presenters included:

• Childhood Depression: Maria Kovacs, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
  
  Dr. Kovacs, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, is one of the country’s leading investigators into the genetic, psychophysiological and environmental risk factors associated with childhood-onset depression. She discussed the implications of research indicating that skills and responses involved in the self-regulation of distress and dysphoria result from a combination of innate physiology and learning history, patterns traceable to infancy.



• Pediatric Anxiety: Daniel S. Pine, M.D., National Institute of Mental Health
  
  Dr. Pine is chief of the Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience at NIMH, as well as chief of the Development and Neuroscience Branch and chief of Child and Adolescent Research in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program. He spoke about the network of brain regions engaged in the processing of dangerous stimuli. He suggested that differences in the responses of different organisms to danger reflect functional aspects of this circuit, shaped during development and involving interactions between genes and the environment. He maintained that problems with anxiety during childhood are robust predictors of adult mental disorders, particularly mood and anxiety disorders.



• Autism: Fred Volkmar, M.D., Yale University
  
  Dr. Volkmar is director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine, where he heads the university’s autism research and autism clinic. He is also chief of child psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He described his laboratory’s efforts to clarify how social information is processed in autism, studies that are serving to underscore both how difficult that processing is for children with autism and the importance of early detection and intervention.



• Eating Disorders: B. Timothy Walsh, M.D., Columbia University
  
  Although the origins of eating disorders remain unclear, their development appears to involve genetic, individual, familial and environmental risk factors. In his presentation, Dr. Walsh summarized recent research on the biological and psychological abnormalities that contribute to their onset and persistence. The Ruane Professor of Pediatric Psychopharmacology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Walsh established the Eating Disorders Research Unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.