ShareThisBy ANDRE PICARD
Toronto Globe and Mail
Thursday, May 03, 2007
John Roder was an internationally recognized cancer researcher doing groundbreaking work. But when he learned his son Nathan was suffering from schizophrenia, Roder dropped everything and turned his attention to understanding the complex brain disorder.
The about-face was unusual, particularly moving from cancer, a high-profile, richly funded area, to mental health, which is under-funded, marginalized and cloaked in stigma.
But the move is now paying dividends in a big way.
In a paper published Thursday in the journal Neuron, Roder, a senior investigator at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, along with a team of Canadian and Scottish scientists, has pinpointed one of the elusive genetic causes of schizophrenia.
The article demonstrates for the first time that a malfunctioning gene can cause the disorder. Further, it offers a tantalizing clue that the big three psychiatric disorders _ depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia _ may have the same underlying genetic cause.
"From a psychiatric point of view, that's important. It could change the way we think about diagnosis and open the door to new treatments," Roder said.
But, he added wistfully, "It's not a cure."
In other words, this breakthrough won't help Nathan, at least not in the short term.
"I'm realistic. I know that my research is mostly for others. If there's a payoff for my son, it won't be tomorrow. It may be five or 10 years away," Roder said.
Still, the high-profile paper does provide validation for the sharp turn in his career trajectory, and a bit of hope in an area where good news is in short supply.
By his own admission, Roder said, "You would have to be 'crazy' yourself to work in the mental health field without personal motivation."
His motivation was a teenaged son gripped by a cruel disease.
Nathan was an excellent student, but near the end of his high-school years in 2001, he began acting strangely, with odd gesticulations and quirky theories.
"Suddenly, I knew all the answers to the questions of the universe," he said in an interview. "But I was oblivious to how weird I was being."
A school friend recognized the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia, an illness characterized by delusions, hallucinations and disturbances in thinking, and which usually develops into a full-blown illness in late adolescence.
Nathan got help quickly and has largely controlled his illness with medication. He is an accomplished musician and studied computer programming in college but, at age 25, still lives at home and is unable to hold down a full-time job.
The diagnosis devastated his parents.
"You have hopes and dreams for your kids and they don't include schizophrenia," said Maria Roder, Nathan's mother. "It took a while to accept that this would be a long-term illness and a lifetime commitment on our part."
But Mrs. Roder said she also realized that as an educated, well-to-do family, they also had the means to help break the stigma surrounding mental illness, and schizophrenia in particular.
"You just have to be brave enough to say we have this illness in our family and it's amazing how people open up," she said.
While Mrs. Roder became a caregiver for her son and an advocate for others suffering from mental-health problems, Dr. Roder's coping mechanism was to turn to what he knew best _ science.
"The only thing I could do was change my research focus," he said. "I thought I could make a difference."
"You could say it wasn't a great career move," Roder deadpanned. "Mental health is where cancer was 30 years ago."
On the Web: http://www.neuron.org
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
