Research-Funding Increases Said Key to Better Care

Dramatic improvements in patients’ lives could be realized in the next 10 years if research was expanded and the treatment system reformed.

That was the conclusion of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill’s (NAMI) Task Force on Research convened by the NAMI Policy Research Institute last year in its new report, “Roadmap to Recovery and Cure.”

The report, released in February, calls for a larger federal investment by Congress in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The institute was funded at $1.38 billion in Fiscal 2004. NAMI is recommending an increase of approximately 12 percent, or $200 million, over last year’s funding level, according to Laura Lee Hall, Ph.D., staff director of the NAMI Policy Research Institute, at APA’s Academic Consortium meeting last month (see Original article: pages 8 and Original article: 9).

“Continuing and expanding basic research advances and translating them into treatment development, as well as improving the implementation of existing effective treatments, were viewed as a public health priority by the task force,” according to the report.

Achieving these goals requires a significant increased investment in research involving serious mental illnesses. This wasn’t defined in the report but applies to all mental disorders that can be disabling and chronic, Hall told Psychiatric News.

To expedite improved treatment and recovery from serious mental illnesses, the task force made several recommendations. Among them:

• Significantly increase funding of NIMH’s basic, clinical, and health services research focused on serious mental illnesses.

• Congress should direct NIMH to prioritize research on serious mental illnesses and apply the “NIH Roadmap for Medical Research” to serious mental illnesses.

• Continue and expand clinical-trial networks focused on serious mental illnesses.

• The NIMH and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should improve their public communication of research advances relevant to practice and patient outcomes.

• Increase training and support of researchers and mental health care professionals.

The report, “Roadmap to Recovery and Cure,” is posted online at www.nami.org/sciencetaskforce. More information on the the “NIH Roadmap for Medical Research” is posted online at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov. ▪