News on psychiatric research. Two recent advisory reports.

Two recent reports have rendered psychiatric research a great service in acknowledging the serious problem under which this research has been laboring and by making recommendations for improved functioning. The President's Biomedical Research Panel is the first high-level government body to take note of what it has felicitously called the "precipitous decline" in research support of the National Institute of Mental Health. Its recommendations of a greatly strengthened research advisory capability of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration Institutes effectively complements its recommendations for increased funding of these institutes. The Committee on Biomedical Research in the Veterans Administration, noting the "severely limited" support of research on the VA's massive problem of mental illness, proposed a series of specific recommendations for an improved and expanded research effort.