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E. Fuller Torrey et al are hopping mad at NIMH for spending most of their $1.3 billion budget on the wrong kind of research. "NIMH rejected funding for a trial to improve the treatment of schizophrenia but funded a study to ascertain how people in Papua New Guinea 'think about their own relationships in the real world.' ... NIMH rejected funding for a study to improve the treatment of major depression but funded a study of 'sources of friendship' in elementary school students. ... NIMH rejected funding for a study of medication noncompliance in individuals with serious mental illnesses but funded a study of social communication among electric fish. ... NIMH rejected funding for research on measuring lithium in the brain but funded a study of how people in Czechoslovakia cope with social change." Although Torrey et al convincingly present their case about the frivolity of research projects funded by NIMH, their stated motives are less convincing. Torrey et al lament that "The President's Commission on Mental Health, in its July 2003 report, estimated that in 1997, the latest year for which comparable data were available, the United States spent 'almost $71 billion on treating [all] mental illnesses.'" The suggestion is that research could produce treatments that would reduce those costs. Yet they admit that "These cost estimates include only direct costs for psychiatric services, such as hospitals, psychiatrists, and medications." Those are precisely the types of treatments they want NIMH to spend money researching. Every one of the projects they applaud involves drugs except for the one which involves "repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) as an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)." They really want more, not less, government spending on hospitals, psychiatrists, and medications. According to Torrey et al, research should be, "'Clinically relevant' which means reasonably likely to improve the treatment and quality of life for individuals presently affected." The truth is that 55 years of research on mental illness around the world, funded by NIMH and others, have not produced treatments that improve the "quality of life" of affected individuals one iota. Whatever improvements were introduced had nothing to do with research. Less crowded conditions in hospitals, better food, heating, and hygiene – the soap and water kind – have no doubt greatly improved those aspects of the quality of life for people incarcerated in mental institutions. Their mental and physical health continues to deteriorate from the damaging effects of evermore psychoactive drugs and ECT. One cannot escape the impression that what is bugging Torrey et al is not that funds are being wasted on useless research, but that the funds are not going to him and his colleagues. Indeed, they go on to say, "An analysis of the NIMH staff for 2002 shows that among the 28 senior officials who are listed in organizational charts as having direct responsibility for the development of research priorities and proposals and the appointment of review committee members, 7 have MDs, 17 have PhDs, and 4 do not have doctoral degrees. In reviewing data on these individuals available on the Internet, only 4 of the 28 appear to have had direct experience working with, or doing research on, individuals with serious mental illnesses," and "The American Psychological Society and American Psychological Association exert strong influence on the allocation of NIMH research resources." In other words, they resent the involvement and funding of non-psychiatrists. In Torrey et al's own words, "It is also a status issue." If they were truly concerned with matters that are "reasonably likely to improve the treatment and quality of life for individuals presently affected" rather than their own status and income, Torrey et al would be advocating not a change in NIMH's allocation of funds, but the abolition of NIMH. They state, "...one quarter of a million individuals with these illnesses [are] either homeless or incarcerated in jails or prisons at any one time." No amount of research will ever produce a pill that cures homelessness. On the other hand, abolishing NIMH would free up $1.3 billion, which distributed equally among those 250,000 homeless etc. people, would provide $5,200 annualy per person. From that amount, the affected people could easily be housed in modest boarding homes staffed by non-medical carers and guards. Now that, not research, would greatly improve the quality of the said persons' lives, immediately, not in some envisioned future. But that's not what Torrey et al want. What they want is research that enriches, expands, and empowers the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries.
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