[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=”3.2″ date=”off” categories=”off” comments=”off” featured_image=”off” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” specialty=”off” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_fullwidth_image _builder_version=”3.0.89″ src=”https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/catalyst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/DSC_1030.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” \/][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” prev_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.89″ background_layout=”light”]<\/p>\n
By his own admission, Dr. Ian Colman didn’t even know what epidemiology was when he graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI became an investment banker, and I hated it \u2014 I was really miserable,\u201d said Colman. \u201cAnd I thought, oh my goodness, what am I going to do with a degree in math?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n During the off-hours from his job on Bay Street, Colman started researching graduate degrees at the Toronto reference library. He read hundreds of books, leaflets, and prospectuses, trying to find something that interested him and involved statistics.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI found a book that was aimed at high school students, by the Centers for Disease Control, and the very first line of that book was \u2018Epidemiologists are like disease detectives,’\u201d says Colman. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Oooooooohhhh\u2026 I\u2019d like to be a disease detective!\u2019 No joke, from that day forward, I decided I wanted to be an epidemiologist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Today, Colman is considered one of the world’s top disease detectives in the domain of mental health.<\/span><\/p>\n Colman is currently a professor of epidemiology at the University of Ottawa, and holds the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Epidemiology. With a doctorate in psychiatry from Cambridge University, an masters in epidemiology from the University of Alberta, and influential early papers on teen suicide contagion and neighbourhood cohesion, Colman \u201cwas a very attractive proposition\u201d for the University of Ottawa\u2019s faculty of Epidemiology and Public Health, says Dr. Doug Coyle, the school’s interim director.<\/span><\/p>\n “Ian already had a niche area for research that wasn\u2019t very well-developed in Ottawa, wasn\u2019t very well-developed across Canada,” says Coyle.<\/span><\/p>\n That niche area is mental health epidemiology, or the study of how and why human beings get mental illnesses. Back in 2000, says Colman, mental health was still an incredibly taboo subject \u2014 suicide most of all. Colman’s graduate supervisor in Alberta, a noted suicide researcher, inspired him to keep focused on mental health, despite the questions and whisperings from classmates.<\/span><\/p>\n “What I thought was, this is an area that is massively misunderstood and under-researched, because people don\u2019t want to talk about it. But somebody\u2019s gotta step in,” says Colman.<\/span><\/p>\n While much of the research in the field concerns genetic predisposition \u2014 for example, if your mother has anxiety, you are more likely to have anxiety \u2014 Colman\u2019s team is focused on \u201cmodifiable factors\u201d, or what people do that causes mental illnesses to develop or worsen, and what they can do to prevent them. <\/span><\/p>\n Instead of just identifying problems, Colman\u2019s approach to mental health epidemiology tries solve them, says Coyle.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Colman\u2019s research associate Dr. Mila Kingsbury, their work is all about catching problems before they even develop.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re coming to realize that prevention might be a lot more effective and cost-effective than intervention, once symptoms have escalated,\u201d said Kingsbury. \u201cIf we can get there early, hopefully we can prevent a lot of suffering.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Coyle agrees, adding that Colman’s work raises important and specific questions about mental health challenges rather than simply documenting them.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s looking at issues like teenage suicide and saying, \u2018Well, what could we do better?\u2019\u201d said Coyle. <\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.89″ background_layout=”light”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.89″ background_layout=”light”]<\/p>\n While best known for his work on teen suicide contagion, Colman has more recently been digging into the mental health effects of a far earlier time in life: gestation. <\/span><\/p>\n Mining the data from Bristol University\u2019s Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, commonly referred to as ALSPAC, Colman and his team found that stressful life events during pregnancy\u00a0\u2014 getting fired, a family illness, a pet dying\u00a0\u2014 can increase the risk for that child to have clinical depression, hyperactivity and conduct disorder in adolescence and adulthood. Colman\u2019s team found a link to depression in 2016. More recent work, published January of this year, showed<\/span>\u00a0a similar relationship to hyperactivity and conduct disorder.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Colman, much of his work on prenatal stress is based on a theory that came about in the 1980s, known as the \u201cfetal programming hypothesis\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere was a doctor and an epidemiologist called David Barker who had linked hospital records in Hertfordshire, and found that people who showed up in the hospital with heart disease in their 60s were more likely to have been small babies,\u201d says Colman. \u201cSo he proposed this theory, the \u201cfetal programming hypothesis\u201d, saying that when bad things happen to a mom when she\u2019s pregnant […] the message her hormones are going to send to the fetus is that this is a really nasty environment you\u2019re about to be born into, and the fetus is \u2018programmed\u2019 for that nasty environment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While previous studies have mostly focused on the physical health aspects of fetal programming, Colman decided to test out its relevance to mental illness, using the ALSPAC dataset. <\/span><\/p>\n The obvious question on the mind of many moms may be how much stress is dangerous for baby, but Colman says that\u2019s hard to determine.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere is a dose-response relationship,\u201d says Colman. \u201cBasically, the more stress you\u2019re exposed to the more likely you are to be affected by that.\u201d Getting laid off from one’s job, for example, will affect a mom, and therefore her fetus, much less than having one\u2019s husband die. Context also has to be taken into account; divorce can be traumatizing, or it can be freeing. And some moms have the capability to cope better than others, just by their individual personality. <\/span><\/p>\n While Colman can easily explain the conclusions his team makes, it\u2019s more difficult to say how he got there. Much of Colman\u2019s work is hard to understand, and even harder to explain; part of his job is being a mathematician, after all. Essentially, though, by looking at huge datasets, asking questions, isolating the information that pertains to those questions, and doing some number crunching, epidemiologists like Colman can find trends that might otherwise be missed \u2014 disease detectives spotting patterns in a sea of anonymous, chaotic numbers. With those trends discovered, epidemiologists focused on modifiable factors \u2014 like Colman \u2014 can make suggestions to public health officials, policymakers, and everyday people on how they can mitigate their risk factors and become healthier. <\/span><\/p>\n That policy-forward focus on modifiable factors, says Coyle, is one of the reasons Colman is such a fantastic epidemiologist. When bureaucrats understand exactly what needs to be done to solve an issue, it\u2019s a lot easier to get them to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHis research is very high-quality, and has a policy-friendly aspect to it, which encourages the uptake of the research,\u201d says Coyle. \u201cTherefore, it can have a much bigger impact than it would otherwise.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Kingsbury says Colman\u2019s focus on modifiable factors is one of the reasons she was so keen to join his team. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNobody likes a bad news story that says, \u2018If you\u2019ve had this happen to you, you\u2019re kind of screwed,\u2019\u201d says Kingsbury. \u201cWe don\u2019t like the bad news stories unless you tell us there\u2019s something we can do about it. Like, this has increased your risk, but if your kid gets more exercise, or reads more books, or has really enriching social experiences, we can really turn it around for them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Although Colman\u2019s University of Ottawa coworkers praise his work, there have been challenges. Namely, stigma from colleagues in his early career. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt the time, there weren\u2019t a lot of people studying mental health. It was very taboo,\u201d said Colman. \u201cWhen my classmates found out that I was going to work with a suicide researcher, they said, \u2018I can\u2019t believe you want to work on that project.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Colman says his suicide contagion study, done with fellow epidemiologist Dr. Sonja Swanson, created some tricky situations with journalists. Colman and Swanson had to be particularly careful to avoid sensationalizing, stigmatizing, or \u2014 worst of all, says Colman \u2014 accidentally being flippant about a life-or-death study.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think if I worked in a different field, it would be a lot easier for me to be glib during interviews. But we\u2019re usually talking about relatively serious subject matter,\u201d says Colman.<\/span><\/p>\n Swanson, now an epidemiology professor at both the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands, says Colman taught her a lot about interacting with reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTo be honest, I was just a graduate student at the time of conducting the study. I relied heavily on Dr. Colman\u2019s experience and expertise,\u201d says Swanson.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Colman, one of the more common criticisms of his work \u2014 and one he has personal experience with\u00a0\u2014 is the idea of determinism and mom-shaming. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI can see how people could interpret these findings as saying, \u2018Mom\u2019s gotta cope better,\u2019 and pregnant women have enough on their plate without having to think about coping with stress,\u201d says Colman. \u201cI used to hear a lot about whether this is too deterministic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy wife was in a car accident when she was five months pregnant with our first child. Does that mean that our child is marked for life?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Colman and Kingsbury say no. A supportive environment and good parenting can fix nearly any mental malady that fetal programming instills, and their most recent project, an online depression calculator, is trying to show Canadian parents just that. <\/span><\/p>\n Colman’s team has applied for funding for the project, which would allow parents of eight to 10 year olds to fill out questions about their children, and be provided with a ranking of how likely their child is to develop depression in adolescence. The calculator would also list some of the most effective behaviours those parents could implement to lessen their child\u2019s risk, based on how they live their life currently. <\/span><\/p>\n Colman himself is a father to two children. He says his kids are one of the biggest inspirations to keep moving forward, challenging the stigma on mental illness, and trying to find ways to help Canadians improve their mental health and the mental health of their children.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s unrealistic to think that we\u2019re going to suddenly find a cure for mental illness,\u201d says Colman. \u201cBut at the end of my career, I just hope that I\u2019ve made some small contribution towards that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=”3.2″ date=”off” categories=”off” comments=”off” featured_image=”off” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” specialty=”off” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_fullwidth_image _builder_version=”3.0.89″ src=”https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/catalyst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/DSC_1030.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” \/][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” prev_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.89″ background_layout=”light”] By his own admission, Dr. Ian Colman didn’t even know what epidemiology was when he graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1994. \u201cI became an investment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":3835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"project_category":[134],"project_tag":[],"class_list":["post-3834","project","type-project","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","project_category-profile"],"yoast_head":"\nFetal Programming: Stress for mom means trouble for baby<\/strong><\/h4>\n