Nursing research at NIMH: An update

Abstract

T HE 1983 STUDY of nursing by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) drew attention to the need for a governmental structure to stimulate nursing research. Given organized nursing’s subsequent successful efforts in the mid-1980s to establish a National Center for Nursing Research (NCNR) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), psychiatric nurses became concerned that their research would not be supported by the new structure because study of psychiatric disorders per se is not part of the mission of the NIH (McBride, 1990a). That their specialty might be in decline had already become apparent with the plummeting of clinical traineeships for study in psychiatric nursing as the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the major funder of psychiatric nursing, sought to make research its primary mission. For example, nurses received 1,252 NIMH stipends at a cost of $8.1 million in 1976 to 1977 and were awarded only 97 stipends at a cost of $1.2 million one decade later (Chamberlain, 1986). Given these events, then NIMH Director Dr. Shervert Frazier appointed a Task Force on Nursing in September 1985 to examine ways of increasing nursing participation in NIMH and of facilitating linkages between NIMH and organized psychiatric nursing. Chaired by Dr. Joyce Fitzpatrick, this committee consisted of Kathryn E. Barnard, Mildred Mitchell Bateman, Sue M. Bishop, Jo Eleanor Elliott, Jeanne C. Fox, Ada Sue Hinshaw, Irene Lewis, Barbara J. Lowery, Jean Lum, David Mechanic, and Melvin Sabshin. NIMH staff member Eleanor C. Friedenberg served as Executive Secretary of this committee.