Louisville Medicine Volume 63, Issue 5 | Page 24

2015 DOCTORS’ BALL PHYSICIAN HONOREES Dr. Jesse Wright 22 EXCELLENCE IN MENTAL HEALTH P sychiatrist Dr. Jesse Wright, founder and director of the University of Louisville Depression Center, has made it his life’s work to reach the many adults with mood disorders who do not have access to adequate mental health treatment. He’s trained hundreds of mental health practitioners in Louisville and worldwide, developed groundbreaking online psychotherapy programs, and over more than 40 years, worked with individual patients to re-build lives with a sense of well being. After medical school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, the central Pennsylvania native did a psychiatry residency at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and found it fascinating. “There were so many questions, so much that needed to be done,” he says, for people suffering from mental illness in the pre-Prozac era of the 1960s and ‘70s when treatment was often institutionalized and relied on medicines like Thorazine with heavy side effects. If therapy took place at all, it generally took the form of Freudian psychoanalysis for the few who could afford it. Then Wright met the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Aaron Beck, considered the father of cognitive-behavior therapy, which guides patients to identify and control thinking, emotions and behaviors. Beck inspired Wright to develop new therapeutic strategies and new ways of delivering them. In the process, Wright, who also earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychopharmacology at the University of Louisville, became one of the world’s experts in cognitive-behavior therapy. Thirty-six years ago, Wright was the first doctor Dr. David Casey worked with as a third year student at the U of L School of Medicine. Now Professor and Interim Chair in the U of L Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Casey recalls Wright’s ability to help difficult patients with characteristic calm focus and equanimity. Despite the advent of effective antidepressants, Wright says, “Most people want a comprehensive approach where they believe the doctor is really listening to them.” In establishing the U of L Depression Center, one of only 24 such centers nationwide, Wright says, “We’re trying to do for mood disorders what cancer centers have done for cancer – remove stigma, educate the public, develop better treatments and train clinicians.” Wright’s books on cognitive therapy have been translated into other languages for use in training programs around the world. Dr. Wright continues to advance psychiatric treatment by leveraging the reach of technology for therapy. Along with his mentor, Dr. Beck, and Wright’s son, University of Washington surgeon Dr. Andrew Wright, Wright has developed Good Days Ahead, an interactive multimedia program that teaches people cognitive-behavior therapy skills to combat depression and anxiety. Clinical trials indicate it achieves good results even without medication, and is as effective as face-to-face interaction with a therapist. With or without technology, Wright says, “Every day is a fresh and challenging day because each patient has his own story.” All his pursuits – literature, art, philosophy, acting, singing and traveling the world with his wife, Suzanne – inform his work, helping him understand, he says, “what it is to be human.” LOUISVILLE MEDICINE