Event Summaries for 2020

On December 15, Barak Richman, Ph.D., J.D., the Edgar P. and Elizabeth C. Bartlett Professor of Law and Business Administration at Duke University School of Law, was the guest speaker in the NIMH Director’s Innovation Speaker Series, which focuses on innovation, invention, and scientific discovery. In this talk, Dr. Richman explored how the healthcare sector can transform into a more affordable and sustainable part of the American economy. Central to any meaningful healthcare reform is a reorganization of healthcare delivery and pursuing a new architecture for the health sector.

On November 12, Dr. Martin Paulus, Scientific Director and President of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the guest speaker in the NIMH Director’s Innovation Speaker Series, which focuses on innovation, invention, and scientific discovery. Dr. Paulus discussed whether computational approaches to psychiatry - using computer models to describe the relationship between the brain’s neurobiology, its environment, and mental symptoms - can be useful to better develop and rigorously test an explanatory basis for mental disorders.

NIMH and NIMHD conducted a virtual workshop that brought together a diverse group of mental health disparities researchers to highlight and identify innovative approaches to understand and address mental health disparities across major areas of mental health science and research.

On October 5, 2020, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) held a virtual Town Hall to bring together the NIMH Alliance for Research Progress and the NIMH Professional Coalition for Research Progress. The meeting featured three presentations from National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff who spoke about ongoing mental health research initiatives, a brief discussion panel with these presenters, and an hour-long question-and-answer session with Dr. Joshua Gordon, Director of NIMH, outlining NIMH’s new outreach approach to increase public access to mental health research, and to facilitate communication between NIMH, professional societies, and advocacy groups.

NIMH’s Genomics Team sponsored a workshop to stimulate discussions among experts to identify systematic experimental approaches to gain comprehensive insights into psychiatric disease mechanisms based on human genetic findings. This Genes to Biology (G2B) framework is envisioned as a tiered approach from broad, unbiased high-throughput screens to deep, targeted low-throughput investigations.

On September 17 and 18, 2020, the NIMH Division of Translational Research conducted a two-day virtual workshop, “Social Disconnection and Late Life Suicide,” which brought together clinician scientists, behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, geriatric psychiatrists, epidemiologists, and implementation scientists to discuss the current state of the science on social disconnection and suicide.

On July 13, the National Institute of Mental Health held a virtual meeting to help promote HIV prevention and treatment science, as well as inform the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative (EHE) and HIV efforts worldwide through furthering HIV-related intersectional stigma and discrimination research advances and opportunities.

Hear from experts on the alarming rise of black youth suicide and strategies to engage and care for these youth.

On April 2, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) held a virtual workshop on Transforming the Practice of Mental Health Care to bring together a group of visionary thinkers to brainstorm how big data and artificial intelligence can transform care for individuals living with mental illness.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Division of Translational Research convened a workshop to provide a forum for NIMH-funded interdisciplinary research teams to illustrate how collaborations between basic, translational, and clinical researchers have led to the identification of novel targets for psychosocial /behavioral interventions.

NIMH is discussing its small business research programs during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event on January 29, 2020, from 11:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET.