Kim Hellemans

Biography

Kim Hellemans Professor

Research Interest

Broadly, I have always been interested in vulnerability to mental illness. Why do some people become depressed? Why do others become drug addicts? Or both? My early research looked at the role of adverse early environmental experience on susceptibility to drug addiction, using rodent models of social isolation rearing to explore changes in reward systems.  One of the key predictors of later life mental illness appears to be the experience of stress, e.g., physical and/or sexual abuse, poverty, and/or neglect. Currently, my research explores how early adverse experience in the form of prenatal exposure to alcohol influences later life susceptibility to mental illness, based on the finding that adults and children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) have a significantly elevated rates of mental illnesses compared to the general population.  Specifically, I use a rat model of FASD to explore how prenatal alcohol exposure influences neurobehavioural markers of addiction and depression. My other main research interest is sex differences, based on evidence that the rates of mental illnesses are highly dissociable by sex; for example, depression is twice as common among women compared to men. Research in this area may help explain the high rates of mental illness among FASD populations, and, hopefully, uncover some novel therapeutic strategies.