The National Institute of Mental Health is currently looking for a new Director. The person selected will have enormous influence on the future of psychotherapy research and practice.

The first question to be asked about psychotherapy is whether it is effective? According to reports of therapists during the first half of the 20th century, the answer was a clear yes. However, by the 1950s, mental health professionals began to question whether or not the therapist's say-so was sufficient evidence of clinical effectiveness. It was around that time NIMH began funding important research showing how talk therapy was indeed effective in dealing with many different mental disorders and problems in living.

Unfortunately, psychotherapy research has been sadly reduced and is under threat of extinction. In the late 1980s, there was a sea change at the NIMH, moving away from a broad biopsychosocial to a reductionistic neuroscience model.

Things got even worse in 2001, under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Insel, the then new Director of NIMH. The biomedical model of understanding and treating psychological problems became even more explicit in grant funding decisions.



Under Insel's leadership, the NIMH took the stance that mental disorders and psychological problems could be understood as simple diseases of the brain. He redirected almost all NIMH funding to research aimed at discovering the fundamental biological indicators of mental disorder and new drug solutions.

Studying the brain would provide "exciting opportunities for drug discovery and development.