The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research.
NIMH is the largest research organization in the world specializing in mental illness. Thomas R. Insel is the current Director of NIMH. The institute was first authorized by the U.S. Government in 1946, when then President Harry Truman signed into law the National Mental Health Act, although the institute was not formally established until 1949. NIMH is a $1.5 billion enterprise, supporting research on mental health through grants to investigators at institutions and organizations throughout the United States and through its own internal (intramural) research effort. The mission of NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery, and cure.
For the institute to continue fulfilling this vital public health mission it must foster innovative thinking and ensure that a full array of novel scientific perspectives are used to further discovery in the evolving science of brain, behavior, and experience. In this way, breakthroughs in science can become breakthroughs for all people with mental illnesses to reduce the burden of mental illness and behavioral disorders through ('biomedical') research on mind, brain and behavior. NIMH is particularly known for studies of genetics, neuroscience, and clinical trials of psychiatric medication.
Read more about National Institute Of Mental Health: Research Priorities, History, Noted Researchers, NIMH Directors, In Popular Culture
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“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
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—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
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—John Lennon (1940–1980)
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—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)