Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, announced he would be joining the growing ranks of Google Life Sciences. Insel has served as NIMH's director for 13 years. He wrote in his statement,
"The [Google Life Sciences] mission is about creating technology that can help with earlier detection, better prevention, and more effective management of serious health conditions. I am joining the team to explore how this mission can be applied to mental illness. That the life sciences team at Google would establish a major exploration into mental health is by itself a significant statement — recognizing the burden of illness from psychosis, mood disorders, and autism as well as the opportunity for technology to make a major impact to change the world for the millions affected."
About one in five people will experience a mental disorder, such as depression or anxiety, at some point in his or her life. And there's still a lot that we don't know about how the brain works, which makes research for diseases related to the brain a slow and difficult process. A trained psychiatrist and neuroscientist, Thomas Insel has also worked to understand the role of genetics in mental illnesses, and focused attention on autism research, according to his NIMH biography.
Pic credit : New Yorker
