Jonathan Flint grew up surrounded by the notion of suicide. The bookshelves in his childhood home in London were filled with tomes on the subject, as well as on bereavement and counseling. His mother was an early volunteer at one of the first suicide prevention hotlines, and the friends she brought home were involved, too. He even accompanied her one afternoon while he was a university student, and talked to anguished people who had lost all hope.
Witnessing the devastation when one of his family members attempted to take their own life had a profound effect on him. Flint’s pursuit of psychiatry was a natural choice, he says now, but he also gravitated toward figuring out the underlying biological mechanisms that make us more prone to mental illness.
Now, as a psychiatrist, he finds himself as one of the experts at the forefront of a massive scientific enterprise to uncover the genetic links to depression. UCLA’s Depression Grand Challenge aims to cut in half the severe psychological burdens of the disorder by 2050, and to eliminate it altogether by the end of this century.
Flint certainly has his work cut out for him. More than 300 million people worldwide have depression, which the World Health Organization has called the No. 1 cause of disability. Depression can lead to suicide, which claims the lives of about 800,000 people annually around the globe.
