Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

1975, National Institute of Mental Health, Washington, D.C.

In 1975, a first-year psychiatry resident named Lynn DeLisi attended a lecture in which the presenter argued that schizophrenia was caused by mothers working outside the home. The episode made DeLisi—herself a working mother, who had struggled to even gain admittance to medical school—more committed than ever to uncovering the biological roots of the disorder.

To DeLisi’s frustration, however, even her residency supervisors tended to the psychoanalytic view. For that reason, as her residency was ending, she approached Richard Wyatt, a neuropsychiatrist at NIMH, about the possibility of a fellowship; after initially turning her down, he provisionally accepted her.

At Wyatt’s lab, DeLisi set aside her own interest in genetics to participate in Wyatt’s brain imaging studies: these had found, among other things, that people with schizophrenia tended to have larger ventricles than healthy controls. DeLisi’s hard work eventually won her the respect of her colleagues, but the real turning point in her career came when David Rosenthal approached her about helping to study the Genain sisters. DeLisi did, and she also reached out to a researcher at NIMH interested in the genetics of schizophrenia: Elliot Gershon.