Susan Leigh Deppe, MD
Susan Leigh Deppe, MD, was born in Ames, Iowa, and educated in its strong public school system. One of five children, she watched Captain Kangaroo, played "make-believe," and played outside with friends and siblings. She spent time in drawing, reading, dance, piano and flute lessons, band, chorus, orchestra, church choir, track and field, and church activities. One of her happiest moments came as a high school senior, singing the Ode to Joy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Ames International Orchestra Festival Chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn.
Running with the boys at first, Sue pioneered girls' track and cross-country at Ames High School, while becoming the second fastest half-miler in Iowa history, and was 1975 International USTFF Junior champion in the half-mile. In three years, she brought her teams from nonexistent to third and second in a state with decades of strong girls' high school athletics. She contributed to Iowa State University's distance dynasty in the late 1970s, helping the Cyclones win countless 4 X 800 relay titles and their first national championship in cross country.
After graduation from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, Dr. Deppe received an excellent psychiatric education at the University of Vermont and the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont. Soon recognizing that the field had no coherent paradigm for the relation between emotion and human function, she was pleased to encounter the psychology of affect and script in a 1992 APA course given by Drs. Nathanson and Kelly.
Dr. Deppe is now a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont and has been in the private practice of adult psychiatry in the Burlington area since 1990. She has been a Faculty member of the Tomkins Institute since 1995, coordinated several study groups, and was Book Review Editor for the Bulletin of the Tomkins Institute. She has lectured throughout North America on affect and script in psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, affective development, restorative practices, and spirituality in psychiatry. Her presentations have been regular features at meetings of the Silvan S. Tomkins Institute, the American Psychiatric Association, and the International Institute for Restorative Practices. She will present her first invited lectures in Europe during the summer of 2003. Dr. Deppe's other interests include mood and anxiety disorders, and public, professional and clergy education. She has been a preceptor for medical students and taught psychiatric residents. Through her efforts on behalf of the Vermont Psychiatric Association, she has worked in public affairs, legislation, and advocacy for people with mental illness. She helped pass Vermont's landmark mental health managed care regulation law in 1994, and with colleagues drafted a lengthy consensus paper on the regulations. She also helped to pass a 1997 law that is now a nationwide model for insurance parity legislation. Recently, as part of the largest mental health advocacy coalition in Vermont history, Dr. Deppe worked to oppose a plan by the state's largest hospital to move its psychiatric units to an off-campus location. Dr. Deppe is a deeply empathic clinician with an unusual ability to instill hope in others. Ironically, during the 1990s, she developed chronic fatigue syndrome, an illness she handles with discipline and humor. She has been elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Married since 1980, Sue now appreciates her in-laws' affect management and parenting skills. As an active member of the First United Methodist Church of Burlington, she also assists as a musician (flute, guitar, vocal ensembles); she and her husband often join forces in a music ministry. They live on Lake Champlain with their cat, Beethoven, and Heike, a Shiloh Shepherd dog, who is being trained in obedience and therapy work. Sue loves singing, running, hiking, Nordic skiing, kayaking, hugs, laughter, German Shepherds, Lake Champlain, sunsets, and dark chocolate. Her license plate reads ENTHEOS, Greek for "in-Godded," or "a God dwells within." It is the root of the English word 'enthusiasm.' In contrast with her German, English and Norwegian ancestral scripts, her own enthusiasm is considered highly infectious.
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