This application seeks funding for the 14th to 18th years, inclusive, of the NIMH CRC at UNC-Chapel Hill. The requested funds would allow the CRC to continue its evolution as a core-based center and to continue to strengthen its research in the cause and treatment of major mental disorders. These include mood disorders, alcoholism, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, movement disorders, and the neural and mental consequences of HIV infection. The theoretical base for the proposed research is founded in psychoendocrinology. However, as interest and opportunity have allowed, the base has extended to other disciplines. Research is performed through the agency of five scientific programs: the Psychoendocrinology Program; the Psychopharmacology Program; the Psychoimmunology Program; the Psychophysiology Program; the Reproductive and Developmental Psychobiology Program. Each program consists of a set of interlocking relationships; some of these form bridges between programs. The work of the scientific programs and of selected start-up projects is supported by eight core groups; the Administrative Core; the Clinical Research Support Core; the Neurobehavioral Assessment Core; the Endocrine Assay Laboratory; the Psychoneuroimmunology Laboratory; the Bioanalytical Laboratory; the Data Management and Biostatistics Core; the Computer Support Core. Only the Neurobehavioral Assessment Core is new. It was nurtured within the Clinical Research Support Core until it had demonstrated its viability and its importance to the Center and was then split off. An outstanding asset of the Center is the Clinical Research Unit at Dorothea Dix Hospital, where patients can be housed for intensive and extensive study at no cost to the federal government. This facility, the wards of the Department of Psychiatry, and the General Clinical Research Center at UNC offer an outstanding nexus of opportunities for clinical investigations in psychiatric inpatients, outpatients, selected medical population, and health volunteers. The Administrative Committee within the Administrative Core is the main executive unit of the Center. It interfaces with the cores and the scientific programs on the one hand and on the other hand with the Department of Psychiatry, Dix Hospital, the General CRC and the Advisory Board of the Center. The Advisory Board, the Administrative Committee and all Center members meet in a full-day off-campus retreat each November. The Center has a major investment in training as well as in research. This has been enormously advanced by the funding in the UNC Department of Psychiatry of a NIMH Clinical Research Fellowship Training grant, in 1988.
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