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NATIONAL RESEARCH AGENCY FAILS TO DO RESEARCH
ON MOST SERIOUS MENTAL DISEASES

Arlington, Virginia — The National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), the nation’s leading research agency for mental illnesses, continues to fail markedly in its support for research on the most severe mental disorders, according to a report released by the Treatment Advocacy Center (Center). The report, Missions Impossible: The Ongoing Failure of NIMH to Support Sufficient Research on Severe Mental Disorders, focuses on research grants funded by NIMH in 1999 and compares them to research grants funded in 1997, which were the subject of a previous report (A Mission Forgotten) released in December 1999. At that time, the Director of NIMH promised to "continue phasing out questionable or irrelevant research."

The current survey found no evidence of such phasing out. It reports that only 22.1 percent of 1999 research grants were related to the most severe disorders and that only 8.3 percent were directed toward clinical or treatment aspects of these illnesses. The report compares the number of NIMH research grants for schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, severe depression, and other severe mental disorders with the number of NIMH grants studying pigeons, songbirds, fish, and crickets. It also criticizes NIMH for allocating research resources to human and social problems that should be assigned to other government agencies instead of focusing on its primary mission. As the report notes: "Breast cancer, cognitive process of birds, alertness of railway engineers, reading problems, students’ transition to middle school, adolescent romantic relationships, daytime sleepiness, how emotion is perceived in music—there are virtually no boundaries to what NIMH is currently funding."

The report criticizes NIMH’s failure to do research on severe mental illnesses on economic grounds as well. A recent survey reported that severe mental illnesses account for 70 percent of the treatment costs for all mental illnesses and are responsible for 72 percent of all suicides. Federal expenditures for the cost of treatment and support of severe mental illnesses are one of the fastest growing items in the federal budget.

The lead author on the report, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who also is president of the Center, commented: "The most disturbing finding in the study was not NIMH’s failure to do sufficient research on severe mental disorders. Rather, it was NIMH’s grandiosity — it seems to believe it should be doing research on virtually every human and social problem."

The Center’s Executive Director Mary Zdanowicz, and a co-author of the report, said, "Research into new treatments that offer recovery and possible cures represents a ray of hope for millions of Americans stricken with the devastating effects of severe mental illness and their families. NIMH must restore this hope by returning to its central mission of reducing the burden of mental illness through research."

The authors of the report encourage everyone to log onto the NIH website (www.nih.gov), click on "Funding" and "CRISP database," and examine for themselves the summaries of NIMH-funded research grants.

The report makes five recommendations for improving the NIMH research portfolio, including:

• Rapidly and markedly increasing NIMH research spending on severe mental disorders;
• Holding Congressional hearings to clarify the primary mission and priorities of NIMH;
• Merging NIMH with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to create a National Brain Research Institute;
• Changing the name of NIMH to the National Institute of Mental Illnesses, as an interim measure; and
• Shifting large amounts of basic behavioral research from NIMH to the National Science Foundation.

To view the full report online, visit www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/nimhreport/index.htm.

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The Treatment Advocacy Center (www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC promotes laws, policies, and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

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