Presenter
James Churchill, Ph.D.
Ashlee Van’t Veer, Ph.D.
NIMH Training Team
Goal
This is a re-issue of a long-standing R25 program announcement. The overarching goals of this initiative are to: (1) complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research needs; (2) help recruit individuals with specific specialty or disciplinary backgrounds to research careers in biomedical, behavioral, and clinical sciences; and (3) foster a better understanding of biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research and its implications. To accomplish this goal, this concept supports creative educational activities with a primary focus on part-time research experiences and courses for skills development. Specifically, this concept supports research-oriented experiences and activities designed to develop, maintain, and expand the scientific abilities of psychiatry residents in areas relevant to the mission of NIMH.
Rationale
Physician-scientists are believed to bring a unique perspective to research through a blend of clinical and research experiences. Over the past three decades, there has been a steady decline in the number of physician-scientists actively pursuing research careers. In psychiatry, this decline has been more striking than in many other areas of medicine. Shortages of psychiatrists pursuing research careers are occurring in a time of unprecedented basic science discoveries in genetics and neuroscience, therefore, maintaining the growth in the basic sciences relevant to mental disorders and translating basic science into the patient-care realm will be crucial for improving our understanding and treatment of severe mental illness. This concept encourages programs that provide state-of-the-art opportunities for individuals during a formative stage of their career, the period of residency training. Optimal outcomes include an increase in the number of psychiatry residents pursuing research careers relevant to the mission of NIMH and a reduction in the length of time it takes research-oriented psychiatry residents to achieve research independence.
