§ LORD TAYLORasked Her Majesty's Government:
What was the Government expenditure on psychiatric research in the latest available year, and in the four previous years, and how, in the latest available year, the money was distributed.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM)The approximate expenditure of the Medical Research Council on psychiatric research over the past five years has been as follows:
£ 1957–58 63,000 1958–59 130,000 1959–60 170,000 1960–61 228,000 1961–62 247,000 In 1961–62 the money was used to support the Council's eight units wholly engaged on psychiatric research as well as investigations relevant to mental illness being undertaken in other units working in the field of social medicine and genetics. It also included a special grant to the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London; support for five members of the Council's external scientific staff studying problems of mental illness; and 19 research grants and 11 training awards. More recently the Council have set up a research group at King's College, Newcastle, to study the relationship between organic and functional mental disorders.
Research in psychiatry is also undertaken in university departments and teaching hospitals with support from University Grants Committee funds as well as in the National Health Service, but it is not possible to provide an estimate of such expenditure.