US NIH funds open for mental health research

The US’s medical research agency National Institutes of Health (NIH) is open to fund new areas of mental health research in countries like Bangladesh.

Director of the Office for Research on Disparities and Global Mental Health Pamela Collins said they fund both institutions and individuals to develop their capacity for research in mental health.

“We also fund training,” Collins told a group of international visitors at NIH campus Bethesda, Maryland on Thursday.

“Most of our funding comes from people who google our website and email us about their research priorities,” she said.

She said all those who emails are encouraged to write an one page concept note highlighting their specific aim and area of research.

NIH, a combination of 27 different institutes, is known for its path-breaking bio-medical research.

At least 140 Noble laureates have had their research funded by NIH.

In the current fiscal the NIH budget is more than $30 billion, of which more than 80 percent is being used for research funding across the globe including within the US.

Collins, the global mental health director, said they also help countries increase their research capacities.

She, however, stressed on integration of mental health services as well as research with other health programmes in resource constraint countries like Bangladesh for better end result.

“Someone needs to be champion the cause of mental health,” she said, “I think if you have nothing start with integration and build from there."

Bangladesh's health budget, less than 1 percent of the GDP, gives least attention to mental health research.

But clinics say the number of mental health patients are growing by the day.

Citing statistics Collins also said mental health disorders were becoming very common globally and it affects people in their earlier age, unlike other non-infectious maladies like heart disease and diabetes that strikes in the later part of life.

“When someone suffers the first episode of psychosis or other severe mental illness at the age of 20, you can be sure the process has started much earlier”.

“If we can identify earlier who are at risk and in what conditions,” she said, “that can lead to better interventions and recovery”.

She said the treatment can be delivered at the community level through a durable and sustainable system.

“We can significantly reduce cost, and duration of hospitalisation,” she said, adding that treatment at the community level also help patients “functions better without relapses”.

She said they also encourage research for generating “practice based evidence”.

“People are practicing medicine in their clinics everyday and developing intervention in the context of clinical practice.

“There are many opportunities of research we may not know about. That’s where we want to encourage our potential grant seekers to think about what questions you have that needs to be researched”.

She said they were also focusing on research to establish evidence of “task shifting” in hospital set-up through which, she said, they would look into effectiveness of treating mental health patients with “non-specialists" providers.

For example she said in Liberia, there is only one psychiatrist who sees patients, so many 'non-specialists' are compelled to take care of mental health patients.

She said they were trying to train community health workers to work in maternity services to identify women with depression before giving birth at early stage and then provide treatment and follow them up with community-level care.

The director also suggested integrating mental health in other care so that those patients get adequate treatment for their other illnesses.