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The Physicians Committee Comments on Research Priorities at the National Institute of Mental Health
The Physicians Committee recently submitted guidance on the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) revised strategic plan, which steers the Institute’s research priorities. The Physicians Committee and its physician and scientist members are also writing to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Monica Bertagnolli, who will soon select the next NIMH director, urging her to designate a leader ready to transition mental health research away from animal experiments.
The Physicians Committee recently provided detailed feedback to the NIMH on the scope and implementation of its research priorities. The NIMH, which receives billions of federal dollars each year to conduct mental health research, continues to fund failed animal experiments, such as the forced swim test, when it could be directing those funds to human-specific methods.
In our response to the Institute’s updated strategic plan, we outlined this issue by highlighting a variety of human-specific methods for investigating the underlying mechanisms of mental illness that should be receiving increased NIMH funding in place of the animal research that is currently being supported.
While research into the neuropathology of mental illnesses is important, there are external determinants of mental health that also require investigation. To this end, we called on the NIMH to create a dedicated research objective covering environmental, social, and lifestyle issues. Including this objective in future strategic plans will bring more attention and investment to foundational aspects of mental health such as nutrition, exercise, and access to care, which do not currently receive adequate emphasis in the Institute’s plan.
In order for the NIMH to demonstrate and facilitate progress in these areas, we’ve asked that it provide snapshots of its funding allocations to human- and animal-based projects in future strategic plans. We’ve also recommended that the Institute set a deadline for eliminating animal-based research and publish a roadmap for accomplishing this. The development of this roadmap, combined with greater transparency in funding allocations, would help to expedite the transition away from failed and barbaric animal protocols, toward human-specific measures.
We’ve also asked the Institute to make a concrete step toward these goals by immediately terminating its funding for research involving the forced swim test and tail suspension test, both of which are cruel and scientifically useless. Doing so would align the NIMH with the governments of New South Wales and the United Kingdom, both of which are enacting bans on the forced swim test.
In addition to steering research priorities at NIMH, we’re also writing to the director of the NIH, Monica Bertagnolli, who is in the process of selecting the next NIMH director. In our letter, we emphasize the importance of choosing a director who is both capable and willing to implement these recommendations to improve the Institute’s implementation of its goals. We are reaching out to physicians, scientists, and mental health professionals asking that they lend their support to this effort by signing on to our letter to Director Bertagnolli.
The Physicians Committee will remain consistent in its engagement with the NIMH to ensure that progress is made. In doing so, we will continue to highlight areas of improvement and encourage the adoption of superior, human-specific research methods, as well as a more well-rounded plan for improving mental health.
