Rachel Upjohn Building
Faculty and staff begin their move
Beginning Oct. 5, more than 280 faculty, staff and students start moving into the 114,000-square-foot Rachel Upjohn Building. The U-M Depression Center to be housed there is the nation’s first comprehensive depression center devoted primarily to research, clinical care, education, and community and public policy initiatives for depression, bipolar and related disorders.
“[The Center] strongly emphasizes multidisciplinary interactions and, as a result, has space for psychiatry, primary care, Nursing School faculty, Social Work faculty and clinical social workers,” says John Greden, M.D., chair, Department of Psychiatry, Rachel Upjohn Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, executive director, U-M Depression Center.
Labs with differing clinical and specialty foci are adjacent to each other within the research portion of the facility. “Collaboratories”— rooms and spaces where people from different specialties can plan, evaluate data and consider clinical issues together—are dispersed throughout the facility.
Designed to be the antithesis of depression, the building has a skylight above its spacious atrium. The south wall is all windows, and there is a garden level that walks out to a patio. According to Greden, next spring or summer they will open walking trails through the woods and around the wetlands. “We envision them as a way for families to relax,” he says.
The new building will also house the Prechter Bipolar Genetic Repository—a partnership between U-M, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Stanford universities and the only privately funded repository of its kind in the nation. Genetic samples will be housed here and, as the repository grows, samples will be made available to researchers around the world to advance and accelerate bipolar research.
Programs and clinics moving to the new facility include:
- The Child and Adolescent Ambulatory Clinic
- Depression Center Administration
- Adult Ambulatory Clinics
- Addiction Treatment Services (formerly the Chelsea Arbor Treatment Center)
- Sleep and Chronophysiology Lab
 Features of the Rachel Upjohn Building include:
- Extensive sleep rooms for sleep disorders research and treatment;
- A laboratory that focuses on stress and stress hormone research;
- New brain imaging facilities;
- An auditorium and conference rooms for educational functions, meetings and community events;
- Space for psychosocial research focusing on ways to help people stay on their medications, cope with stress and educate families on how to deal with a family member who has depression or another related illness;
- FRIENDS Depression Education Resource Center with a lending library;
- Free family education support groups;
- A program dealing with exercise, nutrition and phototherapy, with a special program for those with Seasonal Affective Disorder;
- Two telemedicine rooms where clinicians can provide long-distance care to patients who live in remote areas and need consultation; and
- An MRI simulator to help children and adolescents feel comfortable with the noises and feeling of an MRI before getting a real one.
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