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Federal research funding to departments of psychiatry in medical schools has increased dramatically over the last decade, according to Harold Pincus, M.D., an APA deputy medical director and head of the Office of Research.
"Despite intense concern about federal budget deficits, there has been significant growth and even greater projected growth in NIH, NIMH, NIDA, and NIAAA extramural research awards," Pincus reported at the APA Deans' Advisory Conference in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, in February.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) doubled its extramural awards between Fiscal 1985 and 1996 to $10 billion. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) received $500 million of the total NIH awards in Fiscal 1996 compared with $150 million in Fiscal 1985. For the same fiscal period, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) increased its extramural awards from $60 million to $395 million, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) increased its awards from about $45 million to approximately $160 million, according to preliminary information on academic psychiatry and research developed by Pincus and Emily Anderson, grants coordinator in the Office of Research.
The growth in NIH funding and the increasing capacity of the field of psychiatry to develop competitive grants led to a 470 percent increase among departments of psychiatry in their research funding (from $82.5 million to $385.8 million) from Fiscal 1984 to Fiscal 1997. This is nearly twice the rate of research funding received by medical schools overall.
"Departments of psychiatry received the second highest percentage of total NIH research dollars awarded last fiscal year after departments of medicine. Fifteen years ago, psychiatry was 10th," said Pincus.
There also has been a significant increase in the number of full-time physician faculty in psychiatry departments in the past 15 years who list research as their primary activity, are NIH principal investigators, and have had postdoctoral research training.
However, despite these gains in psychiatry, physician researchers are represented in larger proportion in departments of medicine.
Despite these impressive funding increases, the declining number of medical school graduates entering the psychiatric research pipeline is of primary concern, observed Pincus.
About one-third of medical graduates entering psychiatry continue to list academic or research careers as their first choice, but the absolute number stating that preference has significantly dropped, reflecting the overall drop in American medical graduates entering psychiatry.
"Among senior medical students anticipating psychiatric research or academic careers, the proportion planning to undertake research fellowships has risen. This suggests that students are appropriately more aware that they can no longer expect to be successful without a research fellowship," Pincus commented.
However, the absolute number of individuals planning to do a research fellowship have dropped.
"We're looking at a pipeline of psychiatric researchers in U.S. medical schools that consists of only 40 to 60 individuals notwithstanding those who drop out along the way," Pincus added.
This reduction is supported by data from the APA Directory of Research Fellowship Opportunities, which shows a decline in M.D. and M.D./Ph.D. researchers.
"To summarize, research funds are growing and available, and psychiatrists who compete do so as successfully as other groups, but entry into the pipeline is dropping and the pipeline is leaky," said Pincus.