From the September 15th edition of
The Wall Street Journal:
The Pointer Sisters Electrify the Crowd
Chefs Mark Dommen and Todd Humphries Shine on Historic Day
RUTHERFORD, Calif., Sep 15, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The 14th Annual Staglin Family Music Festival for Mental Health raised approximately $3 million at its September 13 event to help support pioneering mental health research. Co-hosts Shari and Garen Staglin announced that scientists who have been conducting research with seed funding from previous festival earnings were recently awarded a $21 million grant by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to begin a large multi-center study. A jubilant mood set in as R&B legends The Pointer Sisters took the stage and enticed guests to hit the dance floor in celebration of the historic day.
Dr. Ty Cannon, PhD, Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA helped the Staglins make the historic announcement of the $21 million grant for the North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study (NAPLS). Dr. Cannon has taken a lead in NAPLS, a consortium of eight North American prodromal (an early symptom indicating the onset of an attack or a disease) research centers, which study teens who are at risk for developing psychosis and can be identified and treated before the onset of a full-blown illness. Through this funding, Dr. Cannon is heading a team of scientists and clinicians to develop the means to head off psychosis as a regular clinical intervention, as the effects of an episode produce long-term changes in the brain that are far harder to treat. Currently, their testing has resulted in the ability to identify 40% of at-risk subjects who would develop psychosis before they actually do. This NAPLS grant will allow for further assessment, using an array of biological analyses, with the goal of raising the tests' predictive sensitivity to 80%. This would mean that a full 80% of people who would develop psychosis could be treated early, and, hopefully, be saved from it. The group also aims to uncover the specific neural and molecular changes that drive the emergence of schizophrenia and related illnesses, knowledge that will aid in the development of new approaches to early intervention.
"Funding from the Staglin Music Festival for Mental Health was absolutely instrumental in helping us secure this grant from the NIMH, both through the provision of 'seed' funding for the UCLA early detection of psychosis program and through support of a series of grant planning meetings of the NAPLS investigators," Dr. Cannon stated. "We feel very strongly that, with this major funding, an 80% predictive sensitivity rate is very achievable. This alone can greatly change the way we treat mental illness," Cannon added.
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From the September 15th edition of The Wall Street Journal:
