The mission of the NNDC is inherently comprehensive, as we endeavor to bring hope to sufferers of a complicated, stigmatized illness in our society. In order to bring about immense change in “the quality, effectiveness, and availability of depression and bipolar illness diagnosis, treatment, and prevention,” the NNDC has developed simple and achievable goals. We work toward an increased awareness of the prevalence of depression, and a reduction of the shame associated with mental health disorders. Through our current community of depression centers, we are creating ways for member centers to work with one another, facilitating cooperation among disciplines, promoting multi-disciplinary translational research and disseminating best practices for interdisciplinary work. This improved research will lead to better clinical practices that will allow disorders to be diagnosed earlier, allowing treatment to be more accurate and effective. Furthermore, collaborative institutions allow for additional research grants from public and independent foundations, and expanded charitable donations for continued multi-disciplinary research.
The primary actions of the NNDC include efforts to:
-Increase clinical care delivery by establishing new depression centers at NNDC member sites, and also by expanding and developing existing depression centers to increase the percentage of individuals served.
-Expand education and outreach efforts of member institutions by establishing nationwide campaigns to fight stigma associated with mental health illness and treatment.
-Develop clinical and care management guidelines and treatment standards to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and effectiveness of treatment approaches for depression and bipolar disorder.
-Encourage collaborative, multi-site, large sample, translational research by facilitating coordination of efforts as well as the compilation of data from multiple sites and studies.
Comprehensive Depression Centers
The University of Michigan Comprehensive Depression Center (U-M Depression Center), a charter member of the NNDC, serves as one model for expanding clinical care delivery. The first comprehensive multi-disciplinary center of its kind dedicated to mood disorders, the center’s premises are home to brain imaging facilities, sleep and chronophysiology labs, stress and neuroendocrine programs, a resource center and lending library for patients and families, a bipolar genetic repository, 150 rooms for patient consultations, two telemedicine rooms, a research area for the study of substance use disorders, an auditorium, and conference rooms. Believing that a multi-disciplinary approach is key to finding a cure for depression, the U-M Depression Center counts faculty and staff from 21 different disciplines as its members. The diverse specialties of the center membership include psychiatry, kinesiology, obstetrics, and psychology, and foster an environment that offers countless opportunities to collaborate and learn under one roof.
The NNDC provides “Center of Excellence” designation to other charter members based on seven-part criteria to ensure that its participant institutions have extensive, multidisciplinary capacities. The requirements for designation are robust: substantial clinical care provision capacity; community outreach, education, and training activities; institutional commitment in the form of space, resources, and authorities provided to the Center director; appropriate levels of multidisciplinary and other mood disorders research, and large grant funding base. These are the requirements that “make the whole greater than the sum of its parts” and allow for a sustainable centers that can participate in a network that becomes a national resource.
In addition to efforts to increase the number of comprehensive depression centers throughout the United States, the NNDC is constantly striving to fulfill our mission with innovative contemporary solutions and a collaborative culture of translational partnership. Through this extensive approach, the NNDC is working to energize translational research, clinical care delivery, and outreach to bring about national scale change at a greater velocity.
