NIMH during the tenure of Director Herbert Pardes, M.D. (1978-1984): The President's Commission on Mental Health and the reemergence of NIMH's scientific mission.
To summarize these 5-1/2 years, I would offer the following. NIMH--which, like the mental health field in general, has focused principally on services and broad social issues in the 1960s and 1970s--was modified to be a more scientific institute focused on basic biology and behavioral science, major clinical disorders, diagnosis, treatment, and epidemiology. NIMH in its entirety regained a high level of respect in the general NIH community and won increasing support from Congress and the Administration. Increasingly positive perceptions of NIMH may have had a positive effect on the recruitment issue in psychiatry; the numbers of U.S. recruits started to turn back upward. After the early assault by the OMB and the Reagan Administration on the NIMH budget, the year 1982 and 1983 led to a more supportive attitude, and so the threat to the vitality of NIMH and to its overall fiscal support relented. Programs in research training and mental health clinical training and the intramural program were sustained along with the preeminent focus on building extramural support. We recognized that support of the intramural program accounted for an unduly high proportion of overall NIMH research expenditures. In response, we set firm policies designed to build the extramural program while maintaining the strength of the intramural program without expanding it. I might note parenthetically that I had the opportunity to chair an Intramural Research Program Planning Committee convened by NIMH. Without anticipating Dr. Hyman's comments regarding this effort, I will say that we found the intramural research program to be a national resource that, with continued emphasis on scientific quality, should contribute greatly to the nation's mental health and scientific goals in the years ahead. Perhaps in the most global terms the era can be remembered as one in which NIMH shifted toward becoming a predominantly research institute with related education programs. On the one hand, we drew some limits regarding what was considered the purview of NIMH, and we focused much more on illness. On the other hand, we retained much of the richness of NIMH and its focus on the relationships between various disciplines, while catalyzing the extraordinary explosion of the capacity to understand brain and behavior and thereby bring greater promise to the effort to control psychiatric disorders. The excitement of the research and the greater enthusiasm of the government, along with NIMH's encouragement of citizen group activity, contributed to destigmatization and set the groundwork for a much stronger overall advocacy effort on behalf of NIMH, which has continued over the last 10 to 15 years. Simultaneously, attempts were made to secure more data regarding the usefulness of psychiatric treatments and their effectiveness. This too would serve us well in terms of a more favorable attitude toward improving insurance through Medicare and through other areas of mental health care reimbursement. It is an honor to have worked at NIMH. The staff members there are superb, and I want to express my thanks to them. The dedication of outstanding federal leaders is one of the powerful assets of this nation and has been central to the many accomplishments of NIMH.