§ Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health, as representing the Lord President of the Council, if he will specify those research projects relating to mental illness and mental deficiency which are being currently sponsored or financed by the Medical Research Council, showing the estimated annual cost of each.
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§ Mr. TurtonA number of research projects relating to mental illness and mental deficiency are in progress in the Medical Research Council's Social Psychiatry Research Unit.
Relevant studies are also in progress in several of the Council's units whose main effort is devoted to other problems. These include: a study of the prevalence of schizophrenia in a rural and an industrial community; the relationship of various social factors to the incidence of schizophrenia and manic depressive psychosis; a survey of the effects of the operation of prefrontal leucotomy in the treatment of mental disorders; and a study of cerebral abnormalities in epilepsy and of the effects of treatment on the disease.
In addition, during the current year, the Council is assisting, by means of grants and fellowships to individual workers, research projects on the following subjects: metabolism in schizophrenia; susceptibility to mental disorders in relation to certain maternal factors; the incidence of mental disorders in old age according to social class; the metabolic activity of different protein fractions of the brain; autonomic function and nervous tension; the effect of various factors, including electro-convulsive therapy, on the blood level of adrenergic amines; carbohydrate metabolism in manic depressive psychoses: experimental neurosis; experimental work on the disorganisation of behaviour under stress; the relationship between biochemical and pharmacological responses to analgesic alkyloxy-alphaphenylamines; work on certain drugs in relation to metabolism in schizophrenia; and the disorganisation of skilled responses in mental patients under stress.
The Council's total expenditure in the current year on projects in the fields of mental illness and mental deficiency is estimated at approximately £30,000. It is not practicable to sub-divide this total since some members of the Council's staff are engaged in a number of projects at the same time. In addition the Council is spending approximately £110,000 on research in the fields of applied psychology and neurology which have a bearing on some aspects of mental illness.
114WCertain parts of the programme of research on mental health at present sponsored within the National Health Service are in process of transfer to the Medical Research Council; this transfer will involve the setting up of several new major research units in the near future.