Joseph Schildkraut, 72; Psychiatrist Was Expert on Depression

Dr. Joseph Schildkraut, 72, a Harvard psychiatrist who was a leading expert on depression and its biochemical basis, died June 26 at a Boston hospital of esophageal cancer.

As a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1960s, Schildkraut played a leading role in determining the biological basis for such mood disorders as depression.

In 1965, he published the research paper “The Catecholamine Hypothesis of Affective Disorders” in the American Journal of Psychiatry. It became the journal’s most frequently cited article, the Boston Globe said in its obituary on Schildkraut.

“It provided a bridge linking neurochemistry and clinical psychiatry for the depressive disorders,” Dr. John Mooney, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard, told the Globe.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Schildkraut graduated from Harvard and Harvard Medical School. He worked as a research psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health before joining the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor of psychiatry in 1967. He was a full professor from 1974 until he took emeritus status in 2004.