Dr. Chris Gillin

Dr. J. Christian Gillin, a psychiatrist with a specialty in sleep and mood disorders, died on Sept. 13 from esophageal cancer. He was 65.
Gillin was only 18 years old when he accompanied his anthropologist father to a mental hospital. There he observed a catatonic patient who inspired him to study psychiatric medicine.
He graduated cum laude from Harvard University and earned his medical degree at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. From 1971 to 1982, Gillin conducted sleep research at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Mental Health. He then became a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, where he continued his study of how sleep abnormalities were associated with depression, recovery and abstinence in patients with alcoholism.
He was the former president of the Sleep Research Society, the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms and the West Coast College of Biological Psychiatry. The founding editor of Neuropsychopharmacology, the journal of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Gillin wrote more than 500 scientific articles and co-authored the book, “Human Sleep and Its Disorders.”
In 2001, Gillin was awarded the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Sleep Research Society, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.