Kalin receives award meant to spur advances in psychiatry

Dian Land, University Communications

Ned A. Kalin, the Hedberg Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology and chair of the department of psychiatry at the UW Medical School, has received the national Edward A. Strecker Award for 2005.

Created to stimulate the therapeutic efforts of young psychiatrists, the Strecker Award annually honors an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of clinical psychiatry.

Kalin, a psychiatrist who sees patients with various forms of anxiety and depression, also directs an active research program focused on the biology of stress and emotion and their relation to the development of anxiety and depressive disorders. He heads the Health Emotions Research Institute, an innovative center on the UW-Madison campus that brings together researchers hoping to better understand how emotions affect health.

Kalin received his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and his doctorate from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He trained as a resident in psychiatry at UW-Madison and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Neuropharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health.

In 1981, Kalin returned to UW-Madison and has since developed an international reputation as expert on stress and depression. He has received numerous other professional accolades.

The Strecker Award is offered annually by the Pennsylvania Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania Health System in memory of the late Edward A. Strecker, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association.

From 1920-1928, Strecker was the chief medical officer at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, an historic psychiatric hospital that remains in the forefront of innovative psychiatric treatment, education and research. Developed at the urging of Benjamin Rush, considered the father of American psychiatry, the Institute opened its gates to mentally ill patients in 1841.