First coined by the Roman poet Horace and later adopted by Winston Churchill to describe his own depression, the metaphor of the “black dog” has been used for centuries. Now a mental health charity has reclaimed the expression and wants to bring it to a plinth near you.

Sane is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month and, to mark the occasion, it will be continuing the fight to beat the taboos surrounding mental illness by producing larger-than-lifesize sculptures of dogs that its founder and chief executive, Marjorie Wallace, hopes will be sponsored by companies, schools and individuals and put in prominent positions up and down the country.

The campaign has attracted the support of celebrities who have suffered from depression, including Rory Bremner, Stephen Fry and Ray Davies, and each dog will have a specially designed coat.

“The black dog has been used as a metaphor for depression from classical mythology through medieval folklore to Churchill.

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Medical Authors: Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD, and Dennis Lee, MD Medical Editor: William C.

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Depression may be linked to increased activity in the gene that regulates the body’s 24-hour (circadian) clock, the results of a study suggest.

Researchers collected blood samples from 30 people with a history of depression and 30 people who had never been diagnosed with the disorder. The blood samples were analyzed to assess messenger RNA levels related to four circadian genes. Messenger RNA levels indicate gene activity.

Participants with a history of depression had a higher level of activity of the gene known as the Clock gene than those who had never had depression.

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Yale University researchers have found a gene that seems to be a key contributor to the onset of depression and is a promising target for a new class of antidepressants, they report Oct. 17 in the journal Nature Medicine.

“This could be a primary cause, or at least a major contributing factor, to the signaling abnormalities that lead to depression,” said Ronald S. Duman, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale and senior author of the study.

Scientists have had a difficult time pinning down the cause of depression, which afflicts almost 16 percent of Americans in any given year and carries an annual economic burden of $100 billion.

Symptoms of depression vary widely among individuals.

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RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 18 (UPI) — An antidepressant can alleviate symptoms of major depression in women in menopause or perimenopause, the years before menopause, U.S. researchers found.

The double-blind trial led by Dr. Susan G. Kornstein of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine compared the effectiveness and safety of the antidepressant desvenlafaxine, also known as Pristiq, to a placebo.

In earlier research, Kornstein has shown women may respond to antidepressants differently from men and may respond to medication differently at different ages.

Kornstein and colleagues say the study enrolled 387 women who were peri-or post-menopausal and were diagnosed with major depression at 37 outpatient sites nationwide.

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