Friday, February 17, 2012
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Mood 1: Pharmacological Management of Dysthymia

Hagop S. Akiskal, MD

Education: After matriculating in mathematics and biology, he qualified in medicine (AΩA honors) at the American University of Beirut. As an undergraduate, he was editor of the high school and medical school magazines, published poetry, and wrote a thesis on metaphysics. He won first prize for his monograph on Genes, Learning and Sexual Behavior (1969) that served the establishment of a course on human sexuality for the medical school at the American University of Beirut. He specialized in psychiatry at the Universities of Tennessee (Memphis) and Wisconsin (Madison), and obtained research training at the Wisconsin Primate Laboratory. Positions: He was appointed Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Tennessee (1972-90), where he also served as director of research of the Baptist Sleep Neurophysiologic Laboratory. He has held posts as director of medical student and continuing medical education, both at Tennessee and California, winning top teaching awards on consecutive years. He has been appointed visiting professor at McGill and Laval Université, Quebec, Canada, as well as honorary professor at Balamand University, Beirut.  From 1990-94 he served as Senior Science Advisor to the Director, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, in charge of national science and public health policy. This was followed by a brief stint as Special Advisor to the Director of Mental Health, World Health Organization (Geneva).  He is a foreign member,  Académie Nationale de Médecine (Paris), and has received doctor honoris causae from the Universities of Lisbon and Aristotle at Thessaloniki, and the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.

Public Health: He led a humanitarian delegation with Kareen Akiskal to Armenia after the devastating 1988 earthquake. He was invited by the Russian (then Soviet) Academy of Sciences at the Moscow conference devoted to disasters, focusing on Chernobyl. From 1999-2008 he was in charge of the seminar on disaster medicine in the division of International Health and Cross-cultural Medicine at UCSD, where he also taught at the Anthropology and foreign languages Departments. Professional Service: He is a founding Member with Kareen Akiskal of the International Advocacy Organization for the Mentally Ill, Venice, Italy; a founding fellow of the International Society of Affective Disorders, a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American and Egyptian College of Psychiatrists, honorary member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK), and numerous European and Latin American professional societies. He is also a founding member of the Foreign (International) Medical Graduates of the American Psychiatric Association., served as Honorary President of the Hungarian Suicide Prevention Society and, with Kareen Akiskal, that of l'Union Nationale des Dépressifs et Maniaco-dépressifs. Dr. Akiskal’s advisory positions have embraced a broad range, including, among others, the European Science Foundation (Strasberg), the Medical Research Council of Canada (Ottawa), Affective Disorders Expert Center (Bergen), serves on the advisory board for the Fundación Juan José López-Ibor (Madrid), the National Council of Research of the American Psychiatric Association, as well as chairing the Private Practice section of the World Psychiatric Association. Akiskal is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Affective Disorders (Amsterdam)  and Psychopathology (Heidelberg), and associate editor of the Asian Journal of Psychiatry. Of his 20 books, Bipolar Psychopharmacotherapy: Caring for the Patient is the latest (ed. 2, 2011).  

Research:  Dr. Akiskal rose to international renown with his unified theory of depression, bridging psychosocial and biological factors (published in Science, 1973). His research on dysthymia and chronic depressions helped  develop pharmacological and practical psychosocial interventions, thereby providing hope to millions of sufferers. Dr. Akiskal was also among the first to study juvenile bipolarity in the offspring of bipolar probands. The appeal of his mood clinics, first established in Memphis in 1973, is his philosophy of delivery of high quality care while conducting  clinical training and research.  There now exist a collaborative network of such clinics world-wide. Collaboration carried out in Dr. John Kelsoe’s laboratory has identified, the genes involved in the temperamental pathways to bipolar disorder. With Norwegian collaboration, our group has also identified genes common to both bipolar disorder and migraines. With Kareen Akiskal, he developed the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego [TEMPS], now translated into over 25 languages.  The couple has also studied the creativity of Blues musicians and Parisian writers and painters. Their research on cyclothymia in artists has been replicated at Harvard and Stanford Universities and Calgary, Italy.

Prof. Akiskal is the author of over 400 PubMed articles, and is listed in Thomson’s “top-10 most-cited researchers in psychiatry and psychology.”  In Biomed Experts he is listed as the world authority on mood disorders, as well as the   psychometrics of temperament. Fluent in 5 languages, he has been invited by more than 250 universities and medical centers worldwide. He has given keynote addresses, among others, at the New Parthenon Museum (Athens), Miro Foundation (Barcelona), the Japanese Society of Psychopathology, Salpêtrière and Saint Anne Hospitals (Paris), Burghölzli Hospital (Zurich),  German Society of Psychiatrists, Psychotherapists and Neurologists  (Berlin), 200th anniversary of Australia (Sydney), Beijing Medical University, Groote Schuur Hospital (Cape Town), Korean Neuropsychiatric Association (Seoul), and the Eli Robbins Lecture (Washington University, St. Louis). He has organized and/or presided over numerous conferences world-wide: ‘Can we use laboratory tests in psychiatric diagnosis?’ (Memphis 1975), ‘Le Temperament’ (Paris, France, 1993), ‘Fifty years of Bipolar Treatment’ (Monte Carlo, 2002), ‘Serotonin-related Psychiatric Syndromes” (Venice, Italy, 1990), ‘Mood Disorders Conference of Seven Seas’ (Istanbul 2007).  For the past decade he has served as honorary president of the Annual Lisbon Bipolar Conferences.

Awards and Prizes: His awards include: Gold Medal (Society of Biological Psychiatry), Anna Monika, NARSAD, co-winner with Marazziti of the Ig Noble prize (for their Pisa study of the chemistry of romantic love), Aretaeus Prize (of the Lucio Bini Center, Rome), Special Commendation by the President of the American Psychiatric Association, Jean Delay prize, “Lifetime IRBD Achievement Award (highest international prize in bipolar disorders),” Mekhitar Heatzi Gold Medal (Yerevan Medical School), “Lifetime Achievement Award” (Armenian American Medical Society of California). He now serves on the juries of most of these international prizes, as well as that of the Barahona Fernandes Prize on European Psychopathology (Lisbon). He has been decorated by the US Congress’ Ellis Island Medal of Honor “for exceptional national humanitarian service”,  and the Aristotle Gold Medal “for distinguished contributions to psychiatry, science, and humanity (Thessaloniki, Greece).” In 2011, he was decorated by the president of the Lebanese Republic with the Medal of Medical Merit of First Degree (Gold).