New Staff Hired

Five new staff members have joined our team. They are Clarice Kumlien, Jesslyn Esbenshade, Laurie Brar, Joel Wood and Melissa Krzywicki. Clarice, Jesslyn and Laurie will help with recruitment of families. Joel will be our computer consultant and Melissa is helping with data management.

Clarice has been nurse for over 25 years and lives in Huntington, WV. She is active on the board of West Virginia AMI. She also works as a masseuse.

Jesslyn has over 25 years of experience in medical nursing. She lives in Lancaster County, PA, and currently works at the Hershey Medical Center. Laurie is a psychiatric nurse who has worked at WPIC for over 8 years. Her last assignment was with the Bipolar Disorder Genetics project headed by Dr. Charles Richard. She aims to keep up her special interest in bipolar disorder.

Joel is a computer scientist based at Pittsburgh. Joel was also with the Bipolar Disorder Genetics project. He designed most of the computer software for this project and is now helping us in the same capacity. Melissa is an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh and volunteers for a number of public service agencies.

We welcome our new colleagues!

Training conference

We organized a "training conference" at Pittsburgh from July 7 to 12. It was planned in order to provide basic training about our techniques to new staff members. At the same time, we wanted to brainstorm about our strategy, now that we have received funds from National Institute of Mental Health to initiate a large scale research effort. Therefore, we invited our current staff members and individuals who we hope we will join our effort. The meeting was a huge success, with over 20 delegates. We will organize a similar meeting in December.

Research among the Hutterites

We are fortunate in being able to work with the Hutterites, a religious community based in the mid-west. The Hutterites were founded in Switzerland in the 16th century. Unfortunately, they were forced to migrate repeatedly due to religious persecution. At the end of the 19th century, all members migrated to the USA. Following World War I, settlements were extended to Canada. Virtually all the North American Hutterites (approximate population: 40,000) are descendants of about 200 founders.

The Hutterites live in tightly knit agrarian "colonies" and have a stable, ordered lifestyle. Because of their uniform environment and because they have descended from a small number of founders, one is much more likely to identify the causes of illnesses among the Hutterites.

There is another important reason for conducting our research among the Hutterites. It is possible, based on an earlier survey conducted by Dr. Joseph Eaton, that serious psychiatric illnesses are less prevalent among the Hutterites. If so, identification of protective factors among the Hutterites may help us in our goal of prevention.

Dr. Eaton, who is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, has offered to help us in our research. He was instrumental in explaining our work to the Hutterite community. As a result, four Hutterites have offered to help us. Selma Maendel, Mary Maendel, Tony Waldner and David Gross attended our "training conference" in July and have invited us back to their homes for further discussions in October.

We are also fortunate in receiving a grant for this work from the Stanley Foundation. We are proud of this grant because Selma is our co-investigator!

Causes of Bipolar Disorder

We have thus far concentrated on research into the causes of schizophrenia. With the departure of Dr. Charles Richard, who was investigating the genetics of bipolar disorder at Pittsburgh, we have decided to investigate bipolar disorder also. Our strategy for this disorder will be similar to schizophrenia; i.e., we will search for inherited and non-inherited factors among nuclear families.

Research continues in India

With support from the National Institute of Health, we are continuing our research in India. We hope to investigate both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder there, using a design identical to our US studies. Thus, we may gain valuable insights into the similarities and differences in the causation of these conditions between two dissimilar cultures. Our work in India is based at New Delhi. Our collaborators are Dr. Smita Deshpande, a psychiatrist, Dr. B. K. Thelma, a geneticist and Dr. T. Bhatia, a psychologist.

Letters to the editor

The concordance letter is a great idea. However, we think it would be helpful to clarify that "environmental" does not mean influences from the family. For too many years the stigma of citing the family as a cause of mental illness has been prevalent.

Sincerely,
Paul P. And Betty Anne Hamilton
Siegel, PA