Educators Say NIMH Should Lead Research-Training Initiative

Within days of the release of a long-awaited Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on remedies for the shortage of psychiatric researchers, the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry (AACDP) convened a consensus conference to coordinate a response to the report’s recommendations.

The participants at the conference in Washington, D.C., in November unanimously agreed that the key element needed to propel action on the IOM’s recommendations is for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to convene an organization to “establish a national coordinating effort,” according to Joel Silverman, M.D., president of the AACDP.

The recommendation concerning the NIMH role was one of dozens of recommendations of ways to make a career in psychiatric research appealing to residents and other young psychiatrists (Psychiatric News, December 5, 2003).

The recommendation around which the consensus panel rallied as a starting point states that NIMH “should take the lead in organizing a national body, including major stakeholders (for example, patient groups, department chairs) and representatives of organizations in psychiatry, that will foster the integration of research into psychiatry residency and monitor outcomes of efforts to do so.”

The recommendation also calls for this national group to “have direct consultative authority” with the NIMH director and to provide regular progress reports “to all interested stakeholders.”

Silverman and John Greden, M.D., president-elect of AACDP and chair of the APA Council on Research, will chair a committee to make nominations to NIMH of persons to chair the follow-up group called for in the IOM report.

Other IOM recommendations—some of them quite controversial—to encourage interest in research careers involved restructuring psychiatry residency requirements to require more research training; providing incentives to mentors; and targeting outreach efforts to women, minorities, and international medical graduates.

The consensus committee stated, “As representatives of psychiatric organizations, we endorse the objectives of the IOM report to create a new generation of psychiatrists well trained in evidence-based medicine with marked increase in research knowledge and to produce a significantly increased number of psychiatric researchers while maintaining outstanding education and clinical skills in all fields of psychiatry.”

The impetus for the IOM report was serious concerns throughout the psychiatric community that far too few psychiatrists are receiving research training as part of their psychiatry residency. As a result there will be an inadequate supply of investigators capable of translating burgeoning research knowledge into clinical treatments for mental disorders.

Among the groups represented at the consensus conference were APA, NIMH, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Several psychiatry department chairs also participated. ▪