A Momentous Scientific Journey
2024 Alma Dea Morani Award winner traces her career path
When mental health pioneer Myrna M. Weissman, PhD, completed her undergraduate studies, she was encouraged to become a teacher or a social worker.
Her choice between these two stereotypically ‘pink collar’ jobs led her on the path to a storied career in psychiatry and epidemiology—and to becoming the recipient of the 2024 Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Woman Award, the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation’s highest honor.
Getting her start
Dr. Weissman is a Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She also serves as Co-Director of the Division of Translational Epidemiology and Mental Health Equity at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
“I had just turned 21 the month that I graduated,” Dr. Weissman recalled. “The last thing I wanted to do was take care of little kids!”
She enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate program in social work instead. She also got married and had four children within seven years before she was 30.
Dr. Weissman’s part-time job as a social worker took her to the National Institutes for Health—and to a career-changing epiphany.
“The social worker sat in on all the research rounds, so I learned about research and I found it fascinating,” she said.
Life changes
When her then-husband accepted a job at Yale University, Dr. Weissman found a position on a first-of-its-kind research project Yale was conducting on maintenance treatment of depression using medication.
The National Institutes of Health, however, would only fund this study if it had a psychotherapy component. “Since I was the social worker, the research project’s lead principal investigator, Gerald Klerman, MD — the man I later married — said I should help design a psychotherapy,” she recalled. “I had never been in psychotherapy. I didn’t know anything about psychotherapy. So, I started reading.”
Together, they developed what is now known as Interpersonal Psychotherapy IPT. And contrary to their own hypothesis, their study proved that psychotherapy and medication work together to be the best, most efficacious treatment for people with depression.
In a bit of an understatement, Dr. Weissman said, “I invented Interpersonal Therapy with Jerry, and that became a big thing.”
Becoming Dr. Weissman
She knew she wanted to conduct more research. She also knew she needed formal training and a doctorate to do so. She applied to Yale University School of Medicine.
Dr. Weissman remembers the first question her male interviewer asked.
“He said to me, ‘Who’s going to take care of your children?’ And I said, ‘That’s a very interesting question. Who takes care of yours?’ End of conversation.”
Dr. Weissman didn’t just earn her PhD in epidemiology from Yale, she earned it in only three years.
Taking on medical mythology
During her doctoral studies, Dr. Weissman had another epiphany. “It became clear to me that no one had ever done a study of the rates of psychiatric disorders, as defined in the psychiatric manual, in the community. They said people wouldn’t answer the questions and you couldn’t do that in the community. There were a lot of myths.”
She set out to bust those myths.
First, she initiated a pilot study that evolved into five sites and 18,000 people. A few years later, this work became the first epidemiologic study of rates of clinically based psychiatric disorders in the United States.
A longterm project
After Dr. Klerman’s early death, Dr. Weissman developed a new professional interest: When does depression begin?
“The conventional wisdom was that children didn’t get depressed because they didn’t have sufficient ego development,” she said. “But I’ve been around a lot of children and adolescents.”
Over the course of the past four decades, Dr. Weissman has directed a three-generation study of families at high and low risk for depression. “We showed that if you had a depressed mother or father, you had about a two- to three-fold increased risk of getting depression. We also showed that depression wasn’t a disorder of menopausal women; it was something that started in youth.
“That study has taken a good part of my time. It’s not the only thing I do, but it’s the one I’m most invested in,” she said.
New opportunities, new ideas
Dr. Weissman’s current interests also include using electronic health records for research, work she’s involved with colleagues from Cornell Medical Center, Mt. Sinai, and the Mayo Clinic. She is also working on the use of IPT in developing countries.
“It’s very interesting because it’s something I didn’t know anything about. It’s a chance to learn something and try to figure it out. To solve a problem is really fun,” Dr. Weissman said with a smile. “And people give you awards! It’s wonderful.”
But her work is far from finished.
“So long as I have ideas and can continue,” she said, “I will.”
Dr. Weissman will accept the Alma Dea Morani award and deliver her remarks, “Rates, Risks, and Treatment of Depression: My Scientific Journey, at a virtual event hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine on Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at 4 p.m.