John Oldham, professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, represented the American Psychoanalytic Association at a one-day meeting sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in March in Washington, D.C. NIMH Director Thomas Insel extended the invitation to 39 organizations representing professional mental health disciplines. The purpose of the meeting, the first of its kind, was to communicate the current priorities for funding NIMH research grants to representatives from the various mental health organizations and to establish a forum for input from these organizations. In addition to APsaA, such organizations as the American Psychological Association, the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy were included.
The day consisted of planned meetings, in part to disseminate information regarding the budgetary challenges facing NIMH. These include drastically declining percentages of budget increases (from a budget increase of 13.8 percent in 2001 to a budget increase of merely 0.4 percent in 2006); the high percentage of existing multiyear grant commitments; the increased cost of funded grants; increased numbers of applications; and a high level of funding committed to training grants. As a consequence, plans are underway to modify the past priorities and restructure the budget, for example, by reducing the training grant support.
During the meeting, Oldham received the discouraging clarification that, amid these monetary challenges, research on long-term treatment and psychoanalysis is not seen as a priority and applications for research funding in this area do not have a high chance for success. Research grant requests that demonstrate a clear and persuasive possibility of leading to results that will reduce in a timely and definitive way the burden of mental illness (in terms of the toll mental illness takes financially societally, and individually) are most likely to be successful.
In the context of this climate, Oldham believes a likely avenue for attracting NIMH interest and funding, as well as an extremely productive research area, is the biological study of psychotherapy. There is evidence that long-term therapy is a biological treatment that can create changes in brain structure and function that are discernible with neuroimaging. In addition to assessing changes in the brain due to psychotherapy, neuroimaging has allowed researchers to ascertain changes in certain brain regions that predict treatment outcome for particular mental disorders. The technological advances that are allowing researchers to investigate brain structure and functions will dramatically improve our ability to understand the actual biological mechanisms of change during psychotherapy, something Freud could only dream about. APsaA's support of Oldham's attending this meeting and his willingness to participate are examples of our organization's increasing dedication to the role of research in advancing our profession.
Georgia Royalty, Ph.D., an advanced candidate at the Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis, is an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology Department of the University of Maryland, College Park and the National Leadership Institute of the University of Maryland University College.