NIMH during the tenure of Director Herbert Pardes, M.D. (1978-1984): The President's Commission on Mental Health and the reemergence of NIMH's scientific mission.

To summarize these 5-1/2 years, I would offer the following. NIMH--which, like the mental health field in general, has focused principally on services and broad social issues in the 1960s and 1970s--was modified to be a more scientific institute focused on basic biology and behavioral science, major clinical disorders, diagnosis, treatment, and epidemiology. NIMH in its entirety regained a high level of respect in the general NIH community and won increasing support from Congress and the Administration. Increasingly positive perceptions of NIMH may have had a positive effect on the recruitment issue in psychiatry; the numbers of U.S. recruits started to turn back upward. After the early assault by the OMB and the Reagan Administration on the NIMH budget, the year 1982 and 1983 led to a more supportive attitude, and so the threat to the vitality of NIMH and to its overall fiscal support relented. Programs in research training and mental health clinical training and the intramural program were sustained along with the preeminent focus on building extramural support. We recognized that support of the intramural program accounted for an unduly high proportion of overall NIMH research expenditures. In response, we set firm policies designed to build the extramural program while maintaining the strength of the intramural program without expanding it. I might note parenthetically that I had the opportunity to chair an Intramural Research Program Planning Committee convened by NIMH. Without anticipating Dr. Hyman's comments regarding this effort, I will say that we found the intramural research program to be a national resource that, with continued emphasis on scientific quality, should contribute greatly to the nation's mental health and scientific goals in the years ahead. Perhaps in the most global terms the era can be remembered as one in which NIMH shifted toward becoming a predominantly research institute with related education programs. On the one hand, we drew some limits regarding what was considered the purview of NIMH, and we focused much more on illness. On the other hand, we retained much of the richness of NIMH and its focus on the relationships between various disciplines, while catalyzing the extraordinary explosion of the capacity to understand brain and behavior and thereby bring greater promise to the effort to control psychiatric disorders. The excitement of the research and the greater enthusiasm of the government, along with NIMH's encouragement of citizen group activity, contributed to destigmatization and set the groundwork for a much stronger overall advocacy effort on behalf of NIMH, which has continued over the last 10 to 15 years. Simultaneously, attempts were made to secure more data regarding the usefulness of psychiatric treatments and their effectiveness. This too would serve us well in terms of a more favorable attitude toward improving insurance through Medicare and through other areas of mental health care reimbursement. It is an honor to have worked at NIMH. The staff members there are superb, and I want to express my thanks to them. The dedication of outstanding federal leaders is one of the powerful assets of this nation and has been central to the many accomplishments of NIMH.

NARSAD: a decade of support for psychiatric research. Interview by John A Talbott.

The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. The organization raises and distributes funds for scientific research on brain disorders. As a member of NARSAD's scientific council since the organization was founded, I have been greatly impressed by the energy and commitment of NARSAD's leaders and staff and the many individuals who volunteer as members of the board of directors and the scientific council. I asked Constance E. Lieber, president of the board of directors, and Herbert Pardes, M.D., president of the scientific council, both of whom have been deeply involved with NARSAD since its inception, to agree to an interview with Psychiatric Services. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Herbert Pardes, MD.

Though mergers, affiliations, and financial challenges pervade all of academic medicine, New York City exhibits in microcosm the changes taking place throughout the country. At the helm of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons is Herbert Pardes, MD, who came to Columbia in 1984 from the NIH and has served as dean since 1989. Since becoming dean, Pardes has received high marks for re-invigorating the academic strengths of Columbia while skillfully managing the financial issues faced by an inner-city medical center. Interviewed in his office in upper Manhattan, Pardes candidly discussed life and times in the big city and the difficulties of maintaining an emphasis on research in an era when money talks.

The future of medical schools and teaching hospitals in the era of managed care.

At the 125 U.S. medical schools and their affiliated teaching hospitals, most of the nation's basic and clinical research advances are made, and these translate into topflight medical care and great reductions in health care costs (e.g., $30 billion a year for polio). But these medical schools and teaching hospitals and their capacities to provide critical education and research are threatened by escalating erosion of their infrastructure, the declining academic workforce, the diminishing of quality and access as a result of growing marketplace forces, and shrinking funds. The author provides details about the forces threatening academic medical centers (i.e., medical schools and their affiliated teaching hospitals) and then presents a variety of strategies that individual academic medical centers can carry out to more efficiently use their resources. But sufficient resources ae still needed if centers are to function as they should. What is to save them? The author indicates that centers should not overly depend on managed care, the pharmaceutical industry, or foundations to provide the necessary support, and that centers' internal strategies can go only so far. He proposes that the importance of centers and the dangers they face must be communicated convincingly to the nation's citizens, business leaders, government representatives, and purchasers of health care. The message must be repeated frequently so it will sink in, and must be given in terms that are relevant to individuals and their families. He also advises that certain types of partnerships may be helpful. But most critical is the need to persuade the government to mandate separate revenue streams for research, education, and care for the underserved. As hard as this will be to achieve, there are many allies of academic medicine, from the president to numerous legislators; the author discusses what they have said and done to help. He concludes by urging everyone in academic medicine to do their parts to make a powerful case for the value of academic medical centers to society, and affirms his belief that American society will sustain these centers.