Schizophrenia, clinical and basic research at NIMH: A 75 Year retrospective.

Objective: In 2024, NIMH is celebrating its 75th anniversary. At the Congressional hearings preceding its initial funding in 1949, witnesses stressed the need for NIMH to carry out clinical and basic research to find the causes and better treatments for severe mental illnesses. Patients with schizophrenia alone were said to occupy one quarter of all hospital beds in the U.

Critical Gaps in Assisted Outpatient Treatment Research in the United States.

In 2023, the White House included the implementation and improvement of assisted outpatient treatment in a list of under-researched strategies to support recovery and long-term treatment engagement for people with serious mental illness. Assisted outpatient treatment is a community-based, court-ordered, mental health treatment program for a subset of individuals with serious mental illness who have a history of difficulty adhering to treatment and staying well while living in the community. There is research supporting the use of assisted outpatient treatment for this specific population, however, the majority focuses on limited geographic regions, specific program organizations, and is outdated.

The NIMH Research Portfolio: An Update.

To examine the funding priorities of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) since 2016 to assess whether NIMH was continuing to prioritize basic research at the expense of clinical research. Six psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, autism) were assessed using 2 publicly available data sources (ClinicalTrials.gov and the National Institutes of Health Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization [RCDC]) to determine the degree of NIMH support for drug trials and research on these disorders in general since 2016.

The Continuing Decline of Clinical Research on Serious Mental Illnesses at NIMH.

It has been claimed that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) budget, which traditionally has been evenly balanced between basic and clinical research, has shifted sharply and that 90% of NIMH resources are funding basic research. The authors used public data sources to assess this claim: the Research Condition and Disease Categorization Database, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the NIMH Strategic Plan for Research for 2020-2024.

Using the NIH Research, Condition and Disease Categorization Database for research advocacy: Schizophrenia research at NIMH as an example.

In 2008 the National Institutes of Health established the Research, Condition and Disease Categorization Database (RCDC) that reports the amount spent by NIH institutes for each disease. Its goal is to allow the public "to know how the NIH spends their tax dollars," but it has been little used. The RCDC for 2018 was used to assess 428 schizophrenia-related research projects funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

The MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study revisited: two views ten years after its initial publication.

This article presents two views of the results of the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, which was conducted between 1992 and 1995 in order to ascertain the prevalence of community violence in a sample of people discharged from acute psychiatric facilities. The initial findings, which were published in 1998 in the Archives of General Psychiatry, have been cited by some advocates as proof that discharged psychiatric patients are not more dangerous than other persons in the general population. For the article presented here, Dr.

Outpatient commitment: what, why, and for whom.

The authors describe studies showing the effectiveness of involuntary outpatient commitment in improving treatment compliance, reducing hospital readmission, and reducing episodes of violence among persons with severe psychiatric illnesses. They point out that because of its role in enhancing compliance with treatment, outpatient commitment can be regarded as a form of assisted treatment, such as assertive case management, representative payeeship, and mental health courts. The authors argue that such assisted treatment is necessary for persons with severe psychiatric illnesses who are noncompliant with their medication regimens because many lack awareness of their illnesses because of biologically based cognitive deficits.