The National Institute of Mental Health has unveiled a five-year strategic plan emphasizing research it hopes will ultimately give clinicians a better understanding of what mental illness looks like inside the brain — before a patient shows outward symptoms.
The plan signals investment to figure out the genes associated with mental illness, develop new treatments based on those findings, make sure research findings are eventually implemented into practice and find brain patterns for a range of disorders.
These four objectives form a broad roadmap – part of what NIMH director Thomas R. Insel, M.D., describes as a “path to discover” – beginning with the fundamental science of the brain and behavior, and ending with public health impact. An estimated 9.6 million Americans have a serious mental illness that impairs daily functioning. NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health.
One of the hopes is that the research will enable health professionals to identify people who are at risk and begin treatment early in the disease process.
[For more of this story, written by Lisa Gillespie, go to http://kaiserhealthnews.org/ne...s-diagnosed-treated/]
Comments (0)