The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Public Health

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Public Health

The National Institute of Mental Health in Dhaka, Bangladesh is a leading state agency that conducts psychiatric research and training. It serves as both the lead treatment facility for mental disorders as well as providing policy formation and research.

NIMH strives for a world in which mental illnesses are prevented and cured; its mission is to advance basic and clinical research that will transform our understanding and treatment of such conditions. To do this, it must encourage creative thinking and ensure that new scientific perspectives are utilized in exploring the connections between brain science, behavior science, and experience.

To achieve its mission, NIMH must develop new treatments for both current and future patients. Furthermore, it should increase the public health impact of NIMH-supported research.

Many who suffer from serious mental illnesses depend on treatments as a means of coping with their condition. That is why, for over half a century, the national institute of mental health has been at the forefront of mental health research.

Though the National Institute of Mental Health has invested heavily in new psychiatric research and training, it has not done enough to boost clinical research funding. To remedy this imbalance, NIMH must significantly increase its commitment to clinical research.

We conducted an analysis of three sources of public data to assess whether NIMH has increased its research on clinical problems over the past four years: (i) grant numbers related to suicide, (ii) ratio between basic and clinical grants, and (iii) percentage of total NIMH funding going towards homelessness research.