Development of the Research Department

Abstract

In planning for a new major mental health facility, the need for building in a potential for self-description and evaluation seemed selfevident. Consequently, almost a year before the first patients arrived, plans were made to develop such a potential in the form of an extensive semiautomated information retrieval system. A plan submitted to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was approved, and the system receives a great deal of its support under grants from that agency.' In addition, budgetary requests approved by the state after the first year of operation made possible the development of research positions independent of grant support. The combined state and NIMH support provided seven professional and 10 supporting and technical research positions. The department reached what is, hopefully, a temporary plateau in the fall of 1964, when the director, Dr. Paul Polak, and the research psychiatrist, Dr. Bernardo Gaviria, left for two years' leave, Dr. Polak to work with Maxwell Jones in Scotland and Dr. Gaviria to study at the Menninger Foundation. The evolution of the two components of the research department, the project staff and the state-supported staff, has given the department its unique character, each component contributing special strengths to the over-all effort. We will briefly trace this evolution to give the necessary background for the studies reported in the next section.