CLINICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER IN PSYCHIATRY

The mental Health Clinical Research Center (MHCRC) at Yale is a joint program of the Department of Psychiatry and the Child Study Center. The MHCRC was created in 1979 and is now in its eleventh year. The current proposal is for a 5-year renewal and is based upon the accomplishments of the program thus far. The goals of the MHCRC are to 1) foster a developmental perspective on major psychiatric disorders of children and adults; 2) facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration; 3) extend basic science knowledge to clinical issues and pose new problems for the basic research; 4) develop long-term, rational strategies for clinical research; and 5) facilitate younger clinical researchers. Funding is requested only for core facilities and not for research beds or individual project. The proposed core facilities consist of 1) The Clinical Neuropsychopharmacology Laboratories (Laboratory of Clinical Psychopharmacology and Molecular Neurochemistry, Laboratory of Drugs and Drug Metabolites, Laboratory of Development Neurochemistry, and Laboratory of Neuroanatomy and Neuropathology) 2) The General Methodology Unit 3) The Genetics and Epidemiology Units. These core facilities provide funded clinical research groups with assistance in the choice and use of state-of-the-art methodology. There are four areas of clinical research pursued within this program. 1) Neuropsychiatric disorders of childhood (autism, fragile-X syndrome, attention deficits disorder 2) Psychotic disorders (schizophrenia and schioaffect disorder) 3) affective disorders 4) Anxiety disorders (panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorders). There is an active exchange of concepts and methods between workers in the clinical research areas.