Photo courtesy of The British Association for Psychopharmacology
Alec Coppen died on March 15, 2019 at the age of 96. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of biological psychiatry and psychopharmacology and is internationally recognized for his pioneering introduction of serotonin therapy for depression. Coppen entered research in biological psychiatry at a time when there were few biological psychiatrists. From the start, his investigations focused on mood disorders, which involved clinical investigations and studies of biological markers. His early work with David Shaw and others focused on the analyses of electrolytes in mood disorders, where he showed a significant difference in electrolyte balances over the course of depressive episodes. His research involved adding tryptophan to antidepressant therapies, which provided the first evidence that serotonin could potentiate antidepressant responses in some patients. This research, along with the early work by Lapin and Oxenkrug, contributed to the development of the serotonergic hypothesis of affective illness. Coppen’s further work on mood disorders involved clinical research with new agents where he showed the potential of supplementing antidepressant effects with compounds including thyroid hormones, folate, and vitamins. Many of these studies were undertaken in the 1960s when biological research in psychiatry was considered by some to be “the work of the devil.” His research was attacked, but he was able to successfully engage opponents.
In the late 1960s, Coppen carried out the first prospective double-blind trial that showed that lithium was significantly effective in the treatment of unipolar and bipolar depression. The findings from his lithium drug trial have been consistently replicated. The efficacy of lithium had been questioned by the UK Institute of Psychiatry members. Since the results of his study were positive, Coppen became an international advocate for the benefits of lithium therapy. He also developed a system that enabled him to identify the number of deaths by suicide in affective disorders and reported that those patients with recurrent depression who were treated with lithium had a significantly lower incidence of suicide.
Many of Coppen’s colleagues view him as a revolutionary biological psychiatrist. He has received numerous awards including the Pioneer Award in 2000 by the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum (CINP). He served as President of the CINP from 1988 to 1990. He was also elected President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology. Coppen published over 420 papers, which were cited 16 809 times, and he had an H-factor of 69 (Google scholar database).
Alec Coppen was born January 29, 1923 in London, England. After serving in the army in World War II, he studied medicine at Bristol University and at the Institute for Psychiatry in London. Later he was appointed to the Medical Research Council’s Neuropsychiatric Research Unit in Epson, Surrey, England. In 1952, Coppen married Gunhild Andersen from Sweden. They had one child, Michael, who became a physician. Gunhild died on May 26, 2007 of a sudden illness. Coppen was a passionate, complex man with many talents. He was a loving husband to his wife and a caring father to his son. He is respected for his breadth of knowledge and his passion for research.