Research

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The Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) has been important research center since it opened more than 90 years ago as a clinical Department of Psychiatry of the Harvard Medical School (HMS). Along with education and training, and clinical services, research activities have been core features of the activities of the department. Over this span, there have been a number of central research foci including research on: 1). etiology and pathophysiology of psychotic disorders; 2). the neurobiology of affective disorders; 3). sleep physiology and psychology; 4). the role of the social environment in psychiatric illness; and many other important areas. Beginning with the work of EE Southard in the first decade of the MMHC (than the Boston Psychopathic Hospital), the MMHC has been internationally known for carrying out pioneering research in schizophrenia. At present, 11 HMS faculty at the MMHC have been awarded more than 25 funded grants, worth more than $4,000,000 annually. This represents the third largest HMS psychiatry grant portfolio. Some research objectives of the department include:

• To understand the origins and consequences of serious mental illness, especially schizophrenia and other psychoses but also including substance abuse, anxiety disorders and serious personality disorders.
• To investigate factors contributing to chronic illness, as well as factors contributing to improvement and recovery.
• To identify predictors of social dysfunction and psychopathology in persons at risk for psychotic disorders in order to lay the groundwork for prevention protocols.
• To measure functioning in the period of greatest risk for psychoses, that in the adolescent period.
• To conduct clinical trials of psychoactive medications, and to work with the pharmaceutical industry and with human studies oversight groups to support ethical and scientifically sound trials.
• To undertake other basic clinical research, e.g., neurophysiology, brain imaging, neuropsychology, psychiatric genetics, psychopharmacology, and the psychobiology of psychoses and major affective disorders.
• To conduct psychiatric epidemiologic investigations that help us define and understand the broader influences on mental illness and recovery (e.g., investigating sex differences in schizophrenia, and defining the schizophrenia phenotype).
• To improve understanding of the role of the social environment in psychiatric illness, to synthesize this understanding with the biopsychosocial paradigm, and thereby to improve the efficacy of psychosocial treatment. To provide a better understanding of the causes of and interventions to reduce homelessness