LABORATORY AND BRANCH RESEARCH REVIEWS 85Clinical Neuropharmacology
Research Center, NIMH
On September 18-22, 1956, the NIMH, the American Psychiatric Asso
ciation, and the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council
co-sponsored a conference on “The Evaluation of Pharmacology in
Mental Illness.” Over 100 investigators, including NIMH extramural and
intramural scientists, participated in the conference and its proceedings
were published. As a result of this conference, a Psychopharmacology
Service Center in the NIMH extramural program was established, as
was the Clinical Neuropharmacology Research Center (CNRC) within
the NIMH’s clinical research program.^1
The CNRC was a joint project between the NIMH’s clinical research
program and St. Elizabeths Hospital. Felix, Kety, and Cohen had visited
Overholser, superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital, with the hope
of conducting biological research in one of the hospital’s wards that
would complement the research that was conducted at the NIH Clinical
Center. Such a location was desirable for various reasons. St. Elizabeths
provided abundant clinical material for large-scale, controlled phar
maceutical trials. It also allowed for the thorough study of individual
syndromes, exposing investigators to mental illness as exhibited in a
mental hospital population. And the frequent contact between scien
tists and hospital clinical staff was expected to engender an appreciation
for each other’s roles in a common research program.^2
Overholser not only agreed to grant the NIMH a ward but, in fact,
offered an entire building, the William A. White Building, in which the
new Center would focus on the study of the action, and the mode of
action, of drugs on mental function, particularly with reference to mental
illness. Although previously unavailable to head the Psychosomatic
Medicine Branch,^3 Joel Elkes, professor of experimental medicine at the