Hello John,
Congress gives the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) over $2 billion of your tax money each year to conduct research on mental illnesses. Historically, research funds were split relatively evenly, 50-50, between basic research intended to develop better treatments for the future and clinical research intended to improve treatments for people currently mentally ill. Over the last two decades, NIMH has increasingly shifted research funds to basic research so that now less than 10% of the funds go to clinical research.
Treatment Advocacy Center Executive Director Lisa Dailey and I wrote about this inconsistency and what NIMH should be doing instead in an article for Psychiatric Services. You can read it here.
