Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler says three things “get me up in the morning to come in to work.”

“The first is my intense curiosity about how the mind and brain of human beings work,” says the director at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.

“The second,” The Fan resident adds, “is to try to help us understand, prevent and treat psychiatric and drug use disorders.”

Next, he continues, “As a scientist, we really work for the approval of our colleagues. Science is a funny, self-governing enterprise. We review each other’s papers. We review each other’s grants. Each of us are putting little bricks in the walls that represent the advances of science.”

Dr. Kendler was recognized Oct. 19 for his trailblazing work when the National Academy of Medicine awarded him the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health at the academy’s annual meeting in Washington. He was cited for “his research on the role of genes and environment in the development of psychiatric and substance disorders.”

Dr. Kendler shared the award with Kay Jamison, a professor of mood disorders at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Dr. Jamison and Dr. Kendler have each made tremendous contributions to the field of mental health by increasing our understanding of the nature of mental illness and by reducing the stigma attached to it,” said Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Kendler says Dr. Dzau notified him of the award in September.

He says “a well-known scientist” asked if he could nominate him for the award.

The VCU scientist agreed and submitted a summary of his scientific work to the selection committee, which includes the articles he has written and talks he has given.

Dr. Kendler notes that the award “says what you have done in your career matters and is important. That is the deepest compliment that you can have as a scientist.”

He says he was “touched” when he learned he had been recognized by his colleagues.

“That’s what motivates a scientist. I am honored that they feel I have contributed something of importance to the difficult but critical effort to better understand the etiology of psychiatric and drug use disorders, which are together responsible for so much suffering.”

Meet this week’s prize-winning Personality, Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler:

Date and place of birth: 1950 in New York City.

Alma maters: Bachelor’s degree, University of California; medical degree, Stanford University; and psychiatric training at Yale University.

Family: Wife, Susan, and three children, Jennifer, Seth and Nathan.

What do you do at VCU: I do a lot of one-on-one with both pre-doctoral and post-doctoral students and I also lecture to medical students and I teach psychiatric students.

How do you explain mental illness:

The human mind has a series of basic functions that allow us to succeed at life. We experience emotions and we can help control them. We can accurately determine the reality of the world around us. We all experience some appropriate fears and anxieties. And many of us use psychoactive substances like alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. But we use it successfully in a way that doesn’t disrupt our lives.

Psychiatric illness occurs when those functions fail. We can be overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and anxiety in ways that we can’t function. We distort reality and become paranoid. Drugs and alcohol can take over our life in a way that it’s no longer us using them for our pleasure. It’s the other way around.

How do environmental factors contribute to several forms of mental illness: We’ve studied a variety of environmental risk factors. Some of them are disruptions during childhood that are caused by physical and sexual abuse or neglect. These often produce lifelong increased vulnerability.

We also study the kinds of environments that predispose a person to drug use. One such environment would be what we call deviance.

This would be hanging around with the wrong crowd when you’re 15, 16 or 17 and these would be the kids who would want you to experiment with drugs and often give you the drugs, instead of encouraging you to do well at school and be with your families.

What can cause depression in adults: Death or illness in close relatives, romantic breakups, being fired from a job and deep disappointments. I describe it as “Life takes you by the collar and shakes you down to your root.”

The importance of family support is: Substantial. We call that concept social support. There’s good evidence that high levels of social support help us deal better with stresses.

Foremost challenges in underserved areas: First, people don’t always come forward to seek help for their psychiatric or substance abuse because of the stigma. Second, we don’t have enough psychiatric or family doctors to provide good psychiatric care for everyone.

What needs to be done: Change the provision of service where the United States, compared to many countries, does a poor job at providing high quality services and doesn’t provide sufficient resources for those services. Increase the investment in research. Compared to the amount of suffering caused by psychiatric disorders, the amount of funding we provide for research is quite modest.

Is there hope for better treatment or a cure: Yes. Advances in neuroscience and molecular genetics have opened up opportunities for advancement in basic understanding of the etiology of psychiatric disorders. This gives us the chance for the first time to develop new, rational and more effective treatments.

Who or what influenced me to do what I do: Meeting my first patients with schizophrenia when I was a medical student was deeply influential. I wanted to understand how the mind and brain can dysfunction in a way to produce these strange symptoms.

Advice to aspiring students interested in medicine: Find an area about which you have a passion and find a good mentor to help you grow as a scientist.

How I start the day: Get up, have breakfast and bicycle to work.

My day begins: At 7:15 a.m., then I usually leave work about 6 p.m. I then work a couple of hours a night.

Best late-night snack: Skim milk and chocolate cookies.

Quality I most admire in another person: Sensitivity to the feelings of others.

I place top value on: Knowledge and wisdom.

Greatest source of inspiration: The great scientists of the past. My hero is Charles Darwin.

The best thing my parents ever taught me was: That they loved me and cared for me and that I was a good person.

The book that influenced me most: “Shakespeare’s Complete Works.”

The book I’m reading now: I read six or seven books at once.

My next goal: To try to bring together advances in the molecular genetics of psychiatric disorders and the understanding of environmental risk factors.