Leon E. Rosenberg, geneticist who wrote about his depression, dies at 89

After years of pioneering research into inherited disorders, primarily in children, he spoke openly about his struggle with mental illness.

Dr. Leon E. Rosenberg, who after spending decades as a pioneer in the field of medical genetics revealed that he had spent just as long battling manic depression, and who went on to urge doctors to be more open about their own mental health, died July 22. at his home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He was 89 years old.

His wife, Diane Drobnis Rosenberg, said the cause was pneumonia.

Dr. Rosenberg straddled the worlds of clinical and laboratory medicine. He called himself a "physician-scientist" whose research methods began and ended at the bedside of a patient with an undiagnosed disease, which he then attempted to define and treat.

From the early 1960s he specialized in inherited metabolic disorders - cases in which the body is unable to process certain compounds, which then accumulate and poisoned a patient.

Most of his patients were children, including one of his first, a 9-year-old boy named Steven, whose skeletal muscles rapidly degraded. Dr. Rosenberg, who was then a member of the National Institutes of Health, found nothing wrong except an elevated level of amino acids in Steven's urine. He questioned the boy's parents, who said they had two other children with similar conditions, both of whom died. Steven died shortly thereafter.

"I could not change the course of Steven's illness," Dr. Rosenberg wrote in a 2014 article “But he changed the course of my professional life. He showed me that asking research questions based on seeing patients was like medical detective work. More importantly, it sparked my interest in genetic diseases and rekindled it. »

Dr. Rosenberg moved to Yale School of Medicine in 1965, intent on solving mysteries like Steven's - which he did on several occasions. He was the founding chair of the school's human genetics department and later the school's president.

He scaled the heights of his profession , serving on boards of trustees and joining the National Academy of Sciences. In 1989, he was shortlisted to lead the National Institutes of Health, alongside Dr. Anthony Fauci.

But, as Dr. Rosenberg revealed much later , Steven's case didn't take long either. after his own first episode of crippling depression, what he called his "unwanted guest". His first few months at the National Institutes of Health had been difficult; he felt like a failure and wanted to quit research altogether.

Although similar episodes occurred later, often around major career changes, he never never talked about it, or sought treatment, until he attempted suicide in 1998. His doctor diagnosed him with bipolar II disorder, and Dr. Rosenberg underwent electroconvulsive therapy and took lithium.

Doctors can have depression just like anyone else, but Dr. Rosenberg was the rare doctor who talked about it openly - first in class and at conferences, then in a series of articles and, finally, in a book, "Genes, Medicines, Moods: A Memoir of Success and Struggle" (2020).

Image "I am proof," wrote Dr. Rosenberg in his memoir, "that it is possible to conduct a highly successful career in medicine and science, and at the same time battling a complex and serious mental illness."

He called on fellow physicians to speak out as well , both for themselves and for the sake of their families...