Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., To Step Down as NIMH Director

This June, following nearly eight years at the helm, Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., will step down as director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). It was certainly an eventful period marked by two intense presidential elections, an era-defining viral pandemic, and an overdue focus toward social justice and equity—all of which have had significant impacts on mental health. Through it all, Gordon has been a resolute and visionary leader, according to those who know him.

NIMH

Gordon will return to the institution he left to join NIMH: Columbia University in New York. He will take over as chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and psychiatrist in chief of the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital campus at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

“NIMH is the engine that has powered our ability to continually improve the care we provide to individuals with psychiatric illness,” said APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A. “Under Joshua Gordon’s leadership, concepts like psychosis prediction and precision psychiatry that seemed out of reach have moved closer to clinical reality. Gordon was also a great friend to APA and other mental health organizations, and we wish him the best as he returns to New York.”

On his first day as NIMH director in September 2016, Gordon was already on the move. He had been invited to attend a meeting in Northern Virginia co-organized by the Broad Institute and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The meeting was part of a series of meetings featuring representatives of academia, industry, and the government, united in the goal of boosting schizophrenia research—especially research involving interventions for people at high-risk of developing schizophrenia and experiencing their first psychosis episode.

“I did not come into NIMH with the explicit goal of expanding early psychosis research,” said Gordon. “But I understood that early on it was important for me to listen and learn from the outstanding individuals working to improve mental health at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and in the broader community.”

Steven Hyman, M.D., director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute and a faculty member at Harvard University and Broad, remembers those early NAMI meetings well.

“Holding forum with diverse stakeholders including scientists, advocates, and people personally affected by mental illness can be challenging, but Josh acquitted himself admirably,” Hyman told Psychiatric News. “I could see his natural instincts for leadership.” Hyman served as NIMH director from 1996 to 2001.

Those NAMI sessions eventually led to the addition of schizophrenia to NIH’s Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) in 2020. AMP Schizophrenia is a multi-organizational effort in which public and private organizations pool their resources and knowledge to speed the discovery of biomarkers and treatments that can prevent the onset of psychosis. (The APA Foundation is a partner organization for AMP Schizophrenia.)

“I think we succeeded in bringing greater attention to the needs of people at high risk of psychosis to the pharmaceutical industry,” Gordon said. “And instrumental to that success is that we involved people with lived experience in this project, including the chair of our steering committee, Carlos Larrauri, who is amazing.”

Gordon noted that as he departs, AMP Schizophrenia is embarking on its first clinical trials testing novel agents in psychosis prevention.

The success of AMP Schizophrenia—after years of trying to build a partnership network prior to Gordon’s tenure—is not surprising to APA President Petros Levounis, M.D., M.A. “Not only does Josh have a brilliant mind, but also he has this extraordinary ability to communicate and connect with other individuals so effortlessly,” said Levounis, professor and chair of psychiatry and associate dean for professional development at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

“He will be greatly missed at NIMH, but I am excited that he is going full circle and returning to Columbia, where we were psychiatry residents together some years ago,” Levounis continued.

Not Perfect, But Progress Made

Gordon acknowledged that his efforts have not always borne fruit. “When I came in, I defined suicide prevention as one of my key priorities, and we invested in a lot of wonderful science,” he said. As the national suicide rate ticked down in 2019 and 2020, it seemed like the investment might be paying off; however, the suicide rate has now climbed back up, and it remains a pressing public health challenge.

“Both basic and clinical psychiatry research is difficult; we have very little access to living brain tissue and still rely on subjective reports and intermittent clinical observations,” Hyman said. “I recall early in Josh’s tenure there was criticism that NIMH was not funding enough clinical trials. But the problem was not NIMH policy but a lack of novel compounds to test.” Hyman said that Gordon responded in the appropriate way: He strengthened translational neuroscience at NIMH, which led to better therapeutic hypotheses and a resurgence in clinical studies.

Gordon agreed said that generally he sees the past decade as more positive than not for mental health research. “In psychiatry we tend to overemphasize what we haven’t done and what we can’t do,” he told Psychiatric News. “There are many fair criticisms. Do our treatments work fast enough? No. Are they distributed equitably? No. But we have many recent wins that are tied to NIMH investments, and we should emphasize these accomplishments.”

In neuroscience, for example, Gordon cited the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative, launched in 2013. “In a little over a decade, we have reached the ability to identify all the distinct types of cells in the human brain and see how they connect, and this has revolutionized research.” He also cited the strong growth of small industry startups investing in mental health research and testing novel therapeutics for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

“Josh Gordon is an excellent leader who has overseen remarkable progress in basic, translational, and clinical research over eight years,” concurred Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., president of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF), the largest private funder of mental health research in the United States. Since 2012, Gordon has served as a volunteer member of BBRF’s Scientific Council, which selects the foundation’s grant and award recipients.

Borenstein said Gordon’s talent was evident after he won two Young Investigator Awards from BBRF in the early 2000s. These grants serve as a springboard for talented scientists to develop new ideas and the data to secure additional funding from sources like NIMH. “Though he is changing locations, I am confident that he will continue to have a positive impact on our understanding and treatment of psychiatric conditions,” Borenstein said.

“It’s a super exciting time, and we’ve been using the 75th anniversary of NIMH this year to highlight all these contributions over the years,” Gordon said. He noted that the institute has sponsored several symposia for the public and has a traveling exhibit to display at scientific meetings, including this year’s APA meeting. “But I’m also ready to hand the reins over to the next leader and see what the next wave of mental health innovation brings.” ■