Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior

LABORATORY AND BRANCH RESEARCH REVIEWS 71

Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior
I. G. Farreras, C. Hannaway and V. A. Harden (Eds.)
IOS Press, 2004

Adult Psychiatry Branch, NIMH

In November 1953, an NIMH ward opened at the NIH Clinical Center
that was devoted to adult schizophrenic patients.^1 This was the second
clinical NIMH ward opened (see Child Research Branch, NIMH). The
goal was to provide intensive individual psychotherapy in a controlled
social milieu. This closed psychiatric ward provided an ideal setting: one
in which mental illness could be studied from a psychiatric perspective
over a long period of time, in which sociological observations of the
interpersonal relationships between patients and their family members
could be made, and in which related physiological and biochemical
phenomena could be investigated.^2
With the ward in operation, Cohen needed to appoint a chief for
the Adult Psychiatry Branch.^3 This proved difficult to do, partly because
the increasing governmental funding available for extramural research
in mental health led to salaries that were climbing above those in the
government, and because the position imposed a restriction to full-time
research (when most researchers and clinicians in the field had limited
side practices).^4
Cohen was nonetheless able to recruit psychiatrists and staff mem­
bers who carried out research while he searched for a branch chief. They
worked on the following early projects: 1) studying staff orientations and
ward social structure to determine their impact on the treatment of the
patient; 2) studying self-concept and social roles in personality devel­
opment; 3) in cooperation with the Laboratory of Socio-Environmental
Studies, investigating and comparing the psychopathology and thera­
peutic process of parents–especially mothers–and their schizophrenic
children;^5 and 4) in cooperation with the Laboratory of Psychology,
employing linguistic techniques and sociological role theory to analyze
therapeutic interviews in order to objectify and quantify hitherto sub­
jective interview material.^6