No Stone Unturned in Mental Health Research

Over 40 million Americans have been diagnosed with a mental illness, and mental health disorders cost the U.S. $317 billion a year. Those statistics are staggering, even for people who are painfully aware of the daily struggles faced by patients struggling with mental health disorders.

Treating patients with mental health disorders is about getting to know the person behind the disease. More than any other branch of medicine, psychiatry involves putting a little bit of yourself into your work, and forming a bond with your patient. "When you actually get to meet a patient you've been able to develop a medicine for, it's exhilarating. It makes you want to go and work harder, show up earlier, stay later, and actually go and deliver that next breakthrough medicine," said Dr. Ken Koblan, Head of Global Translational Medicine and Early Development and Discovery Sciences at Sunovion.

The same principle applies to mental health drug research; our researchers take mental illness personally. They make patients the center of every project they take on and leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of new treatment options.

Dr. Doug Williamson, Chief Medical Officer at Lundbeck, worked on one of the recent treatments for schizophrenia. "I'm fighting for people whose lives would otherwise be devastated by mental illness," said Dr. Williamson.