NIMH UPDATE

In 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Mental Health Act, enabling the founding, three years later, of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Now one of 27 Institutes and Centers that constitute the National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 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 past year, NIMH has been led by Acting Director Andrea Beckel-Mitchener, Ph.D., while a national search for a permanent director is underway. To fulfill its vital public health mission, the Institute is guided by its Strategic Plan for Research, a roadmap for the Institute’s priorities, outlining four major goals: Define the brain mechanisms underlying complex behavior, including genomics; examine mental illness trajectories across the lifespan to determine when, where, and how to intervene; strive for prevention and cures, optimizing and personalizing preventive and therapeutic interventions; and advance mental health services to strengthen public health. Over 10% of the NIMH budget supports the intramural research program on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, site of cutting-edge basic and clinical research, ranging from early-phase treatment development, such as breakthrough studies with intravenous ketamine for severe depression, to genomics and advanced brain imaging. Most NIMH support is directed to universities, research institutions, and small business, for largely investigator-initiated studies, with an overarching goal of transforming research into realworld care. Translational research expanding the contribution of Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) and biomarker development are encouraged, and the experimental therapeutics approach, studying mediators of treatment response, is required in all clinical trials applying for NIMH support. Suicide prevention research remains a priority, including studies of rapidly-acting interventions, including ketamine and potentially other classical and novel treatments. Consistent with the recent ASCP consensus statement on the subject, deprescribing is a growing area of interest to NIMH, given the host of questions in need of systemic research, including the potential role of nonpharmacologic interventions before, during, and after deprescribing, in the interest of reducing inappropriate or excessive medication use. Another priority area is the treatment of first-episode psychosis, led by the Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET), a learning health care system aimed at enhancing coordinated specialty care to improve early identification, diagnosis, clinical assessment, intervention effectiveness, service delivery, and health outcomes for individuals with early psychosis. EPINET now has 8 regional scientific hubs and has enrolled approximately 4,000 participants from more than 100 clinics across 17 states, promoting early intervention and conducting effectiveness research, while making the EPINET Core Assessment Battery available to all early psychosis care clinicians to assess key domains of early psychosis, treatment, and recovery.

Learning Objective 1: At the conclusion of this presentation, attendees will appreciate the four goals of the NIMH Strategic Plan.

Learning Objective 2: At the conclusion of this presentation, attendees will gain an understanding of role of the EPINET project in promoting early identification and coordinated specialty care in the treatment of individuals with early psychosis.

References

George P, Spark TL, Devora A, et al. Structural characteristics of Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) programs. Psychiatr Serv. 2026; Online ahead of print. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.20250320. Morris SE, Sanislow CA, Pacheco J, et al. Revisiting the seven pillars of RDoC. BMC Medicine. 2022;20(1):220. 1:15 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. Workshops