Pioneering Researcher Aims to Inspire Next Generation
Despite being actively discoursed from pursuing a PhD, Myrna M. Weissman went against her era’s conventions and forged a successful career at Yale University.
Published March 1, 2017
By Marie Gentile and Robert Birchard
Academy Contributor
“I tell them research can be very exciting and they should do it if they have a passion for it. It’s not going to be easy, but we try not to discourage them.” These words for young scientists are from Myrna M. Weissman, PhD. An innovative epidemiologist and researcher, Dr. Weissman’s advice to the next generation of scientists differs greatly from the advice she received at the start of her own career.
Upon graduating from college with honors, Weissman was discouraged from getting a PhD and told to, “go to social work school or into teaching.” That, and, of course, “get married.” Dr. Weissman went on to earn her Master’s in social work. By the late 1960s, Dr. Weissman’s husband accepted a position at Yale University and the family moved to New Haven.
“I looked for a part-time job as a social worker because I had four children, all under the age of seven—a lot to handle. But I got a job [at Yale] on the first clinical trial of psychotherapy and depression and it was fantastic!” It was in this laboratory that she and her mentor Gerald Klerman, MD developed a manual on Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), which became a landmark empirically-supported treatment for depression.
The Rest is History
By 1970, Dr. Weissman decided to pursue her PhD in epidemiology. “The first thing I was asked when I applied was, ‘Who’s going to take care of your children?’ My answer? ‘Who takes care of yours?’ But [our work] was so interesting that I didn’t let this bother me. So I went to Yale, got a PhD, and I loved it. The rest is history.” Dr. Weissman was the first woman to secure tenure in Yale’s psychiatry department and among the first to examine the epidemiology of psychiatric disorders using clinical criteria by first looking at rates of depression in the New Haven community. This small collaborative study was the basis for the first epidemiologic study of psychiatric disorders in the US.
The IPT manual she developed early in her career has been translated into numerous languages, tested in nearly 100 clinical trials, and has been used to treat different populations worldwide. It has been tested in several low-income countries with Lena Verdeli, PhD and investigators from Johns Hopkins University, and the World Health Organization launched a simpler version for health workers for worldwide distribution in October 2016.
Past Discoveries, New Insights
Currently, Dr. Weissman is the Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and Chief of the Division of Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She has won numerous awards for her research and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Her study, in collaboration with investigators at Columbia and elsewhere, of families at high and low risk for depression, now in its 30th year, spans three generations. She incorporated neuroimaging and genetic components in order to better understand mechanisms underlying depression.
While the field has changed, the dynamism and collaboration inherent in the sciences keeps her work interesting, “Let me emphasize that I have had the good fortune of collaborating with some brilliant people over the years, none of this work is done solo. It is vital to collaborate with people who are at the forefront of novel methods including, in this case, neuroimaging, genetics and neuroscience. “You cannot be stuck in the past in science, otherwise new findings end. Science builds on past discoveries even when you refute them with new insights.”
Also read: A Scientist by Trade, A Leader by Example
