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Mental Health Research Prime Candidate for Budget Cuts

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), currently under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) umbrella, receives over $600 million a year for research purposes. Just a cursory examination of mental health research funded through NIMH and NIH reveals numerous absurd, wasteful and ludicrous studies. The following is a representative sampling of studies which were found:

  • A 4-year drug study on sexual behavior which included researchers studying horses masturbating. (Over $200,000)

  • A 4-year study in which known child molesters were allowed to prey on children without law enforcement officials being notified. (Over $1,371,000)

  • An 8-year study wherein quail were castrated as part of the research on sexual behavior. (Over $333,000)

  • A 4-year study of the nasal cavities of male hamsters during intercourse. (Estimated over several hundred thousand dollars)

  • A 2-year study on the sexual preference and behavior of prairie voles. (Over $150,000)

  • A 32-year study on the chemical reactions in the jaw muscles of pigeons, to find reasons for eating disorders in humans. (Over $1,200,000)

  • A 13-year study in which rats were given hallucinogens such as LSD to see how they react when “startled.” (Over $1,200,000)

  • An 11-year study in which female guinea pigs’ genitals were stimulated to measure how hormones affect sexual behavior. (Over $468,000)

  • A 9-year study of maternal licking of the genital region of male vs. female ferret babies. (Over $516,000)

  • A 9-year study on the sexual behavior of lizards. (Over $900,000)

  • A 23-year study of sexual odors and social factors which affect male Asian monkeys. (Over $1,760,000)

  • A 23-year study of the sexual behavior of male rats, as a biological basis for behavior in humans. (Estimated over $300,000)

  • A 31-year drug study on how rhesus monkeys react while being tortured while on mind-altering drugs. (Over $2,365,000)

  • A 20-year study of the so-called sexual control center in the brains of gerbils. (Over $1,290,000)

  • A 15-year study on the effect of the endocrine system on the annual behavior rhythms of the Golden Mantled ground squirrel. (Over $500,000)

      • These studies have been ongoing for years, some of them for decades, at the cost of millions of dollars, with no meaningful purpose or results. In the meantime, crime, violence, drug addiction and illiteracy continue to soar in America while this “research” has contributed nothing to solving the real social problems of America.M

      Do taxpayers really want to spend countless millions having masturbating horses studied or turning perverts loose on communities, immune from prosecution so they can be “studied?”

      How did it become the job of the federal government to fund research on such matters? It is time to seriously question what the government is doing in the mental health business at all.

      The government agency (NIMH) that is carrying out such absurd, wasteful and in some cases, destructive research, should be abolished.

      Billions are already spent in the private sector researching so-called mental illnesses and their treatments. If these decades-long studies are truly needed and produce results, the private sector will fund them. Such research should not be funded by taxpayer dollars.

      The federal government’s funding of mental health does not stop there. Research is just a small portion of wasted tax dollars going to the mental health industry with little or no visibly constructive product.

      The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), another federal agency, received appropriations of over $2.125 billion for Fiscal Year 1994. Over one-half of this money, $1.455 billion, was given to states in the form of Block Grants, for which there is no federal accountability for results. With the type of ludicrous research being done at the federal level, how many millions of these Block Grant dollars are being similarly wasted at the state level?

      A Long History of Fraud

      It has become apparent that the federal government has trusted the mental health industry too long. A 1992 congressional hearing by the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families on the private, for-profit psychiatric hospital industry found that psychiatric hospitals were “defrauding government programs and private insurers of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” It was called by one congresswoman “one of the most disgraceful and scandalous episodes in the history of health care in America.”

      Such fraud and waste is not new. In 1985, the Department of Justice reported that while psychiatrists made up 8% of the physicians in the U.S., they accounted for 18% of the physicians suspended from Medicaid and Medicare for fraud over a 15-year period. Currently there are ongoing investigations by the Department of Justice, FBI, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and other law enforcement agencies nationwide to clean up the rampant fraud and patient abuse in the private, for-profit psychiatric hospital industry.

      Summary

      1) There has been enormous funding by the U.S. government of ridiculous and wasteful mental health studies. This funding should be eliminated.

      2) Decades of “mental health” studies which have produced no tangible benefit in combating the real social problems of America.

      3) Billions are already spent in the private sector researching so-called mental illnesses and their treatments. If these decades-long studies are truly needed and produce results, the private sector will fund them.

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