Current Research on Psychological Disorders

Perhaps of all the topics in this course, psychological disorders lends itself best to Web exploration. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) maintains an excellent Web site (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/) for extending your exploration of psychological disorders. Review the major diagnostic categories and check out the latest research findings regarding our understanding of the causes, prevention, and treatment of specific psychological disorders. Also see the QuickTime videos and animations produced by NIMH's Clinical Brain Disorders Branch. Tour NIMH-funded laboratories around the United States and peek over the shoulders of researchers as they describe their current experiments. And don't stop there! Use this chapter's Web Links as jumping-off points to dozens of other Internet resources that provide information about psychological disorders. Perhaps start with http://sig.biostr.washington.edu/projects/brain/, a site about the Human Brain Project. To focus your tour, see if you can find answers to the following questions:

1. What is the Human Brain Project?

2. What is the estimated annual economic impact of mental disorders in the United States ? What are some of the hidden costs of mental disorders?

3. What have NIMH researchers recently learned about schizophrenia using state-of-the-art brain-imaging techniques?

4. What are the current (and future) research priorities of NIMH?

5. What is "clozapine treatment"? For whom is it intended? Does it work?