8 FARRERAS
Congressman of Ohio, Brown [who had helped get the bill
through]....[David M.] Levy,...[Edward A.] Strecker,...
[William C.] Menninger,...and [John] Romano...were not
chosen for any pay-off purposes. These were all strong men.^33By December 1950, the Council would come to consist of twelve
members–six experts on mental illness and six lay members–who review
ed research and training proposals and then made recommendations to
the Surgeon General.Organization of the National Institute of Mental Health
The PHS’s Division of Mental Hygiene administered the Act’s program
until it was formally established as one of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH).^34 The Act’s first appropriation was passed in 1947 for the
1948 fiscal year and when the NIMH became an official institute of
the NIH on April 15, 1949, it took over the division’s functions as ad
ministrator of the National Mental Health Act program, marking the
beginning of the federal government’s large-scale support of research in
mental health.^35
This did not come about easily. In the beginning, the research
appropriations were minimal–the first appropriation consisted of about
$400,000–and the National Institute of “Head Feelers” was small and
non-threatening.^36 Increasingly larger appropriations, however, translated
into the PHS appointing a First Reorganization Committee that planned
to reorganize and dismember the new NIMH in order to partake of the
newly acquired riches.^37 These parties wanted to place the research
component within the NIH, the training component partly within the
NIH as well as within the Office of Education (in the Bureau of State
Services), the community services component within the Bureau of
State Services, and the two narcotic hospitals within the Division of
Hospitals of the Bureau of Medical Services.^38
Felix, however, believed that the national mental health program
would be destroyed if the Act’s three components were torn apart; its
strength lay in its being a solid, integrated program under one person’s
direction. As a result, he approached the director of the NIH, Rolla
Eugene Dyer, and asked for the NIMH to become one of the NIH