Transforming the understanding
and treatment of mental illnesses.

Approved Concept Clearances

Approved Concepts for Requests for Applications (RFAs), Program Announcements (PAs), and Requests for Proposals (RFPs)

Specific information on each initiative, including receipt date, will be available once the RFA, RFP, PAR, a PA with special receipt, referral and/or review considerations, or PAS, a PA that includes specific set-aside funds, has been published. This page provides links to recently cleared concepts for upcoming solicitations and presents key information, including the objectives and descriptions of future solicitations and a direct link to NIMH staff contacts. The NIMH staff contacts can provide additional information on specific concepts, where available and appropriate.

This listing of potential future initiatives is meant to provide the earliest possible alert to potential applicants in order to maximize application preparation time. While the NIMH plans to proceed with these initiatives, their publication and timing is not certain and depends on sufficient funds being available. The titles and brief descriptions are consistent with the information available at the time of concept clearance. The resultant RFAs, RFPs, PARs, or PASs may differ from the concepts in the final wording of the titles or other aspects.

Although some concept clearances may have been approved at alternative venues (*), the NAMHC now conducts all NIMH concept clearances.

For more information, see the NIH Guide’s  list of published RFAs  and PAs  and NIMH Contracts.

Submit comments to NIMHinitiatives@mail.nih.gov.

To obtain a copy of Concept Clearances prior to 2013, please contact the nimh.advisorycouncil@mail.nih.gov.

Concepts

Optimizing Treatment Strategies for Adult Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

The goal of this concept is to encourage the development of evidence-based treatments for adult ADHD that utilize nonstimulant medications, psychosocial interventions, and device-based approaches, in situations where stimulant monotherapy is insufficiently effective, difficult to tolerate, or undesirable.

Treatment Strategies for CNS Complications in People with HIV

The purpose of this concept is to identify modifiable targets and mechanisms to alleviate clinically relevant central nervous system (CNS) complications and to develop comprehensive validated treatment strategies to improve outcomes in people with HIV. The key goal of the concept is to improve quality of life, reduce symptom severity, and maximize functional capacity in individuals with HIV experiencing adverse CNS outcomes.

Discovery of Proteins and Metabolites Implicated in Mental Illness and Neurodevelopmental Disorders

The goal of this concept is to determine changes in protein expression, post-translational modifications, protein-protein interactions, and/or metabolite abundance in human postmortem brain and human-derived cells across development and as a function of mental illness and/or neurodevelopmental disorders.

Laboratories to Optimize Digital Health

The goal of this concept is to continue to foster research collaborations between academic researchers and digital health technology developers to test strategies to increase the reach, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of digital mental health interventions. Research is also needed to optimize existing technology and understand factors related to engagement and sustainability of digital health platforms.

Accelerating Solutions to Improve Access and Quality of Empirically-Supported Practices for Youth Mental Health

This concept encourages youth (ages 0-25 years) mental health prevention, treatment, and services research that addresses barriers to empirically-supported and high-quality youth mental health care. It is expected that research supported by this concept will generate knowledge, methods, and approaches that can be readily applied in real-world settings and systems of care.

Navigator Emergency Department Diversion Models for Non-Urgent Mental Health Concerns

The purpose of this concept is to support research examining the effectiveness, implementation, adoption and scale-up of patient navigation emergency department (ED) diversion models for youth with non-urgent mental health concerns and their caregivers.

National Cooperative Drug/Device Discovery/Development Groups (NCDDG) for the Treatment of Mental Health Disorders

The goal of the NCDDG program is to advance the discovery, preclinical development, and early proof of concept testing in humans of new pharmacologic and neuromodulatory approaches to treat mental disorders, and to develop novel ligands and circuit-engagement devices as tools to further characterize existing or to validate new drug and device targets.

Genetic Architecture of Mental Disorders in Ancestrally Diverse Populations II

The goal of this concept is to continue NIMH efforts in supporting the collection and genomic characterization of cohorts with mental illness from diverse ancestral backgrounds. The focus of this concept will be the collection of large cohorts of non-European or admixed ancestries in the United States and around the globe.

Neuromodulation/Neurostimulation Device Development for Mental Health Applications

The goal of this concept is to encourage the development of novel brain stimulation devices and accompanying software/hardware additions that will enable improved delivery of brain stimulation treatments and facilitate eventual FDA clearance/approval of devices for mental health indications.

Utilizing Invasive Recording and Stimulating Opportunities in Humans to Advance Neural Circuitry Understanding of Mental Health Disorders

The goal of this concept is to encourage research utilizing invasive neural recording opportunities in humans to study the neural circuity underlying mental health disorders.

Multimodal Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges in HIV Clinical Care

The goal of this concept is to encourage the use of multimodal artificial intelligence to accelerate HIV diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.

Role of T-Cells in HIV Central Nervous System Reservoir Seeding, Persistence, and Neuropathogenesis

The goal of this concept is to encourage research to define the mechanisms and roles of T-cells in HIV/central nervous system (CNS) reservoir seeding, persistence and neuropathogenesis. This research will be critical for developing therapeutic strategies for targeting CNS reservoirs and ongoing neuroinflammation that drive CNS comorbidities.

Establishing Standards for Data and Metadata from Wearable Devices

Wearable technology shows promise in providing information that can be used to create biomarkers of various diagnostic groups that have relevance to mental illness. However, there are barriers related to the different data formats used in existing devices that make data aggregation difficult. The purpose of this concept is to support the establishment of standards for data, as well as metadata and related coordination activities, that will allow researchers to easily access data from wearable devices and integrate those data for subsequent data analysis.

NIH NeuroBioBank

This concept seeks to continue the NIH NeuroBioBank (NBB) program which is a network of brain and tissue repositories and related resources that provide biospecimens to the neuroscience research community. In this competitive continuation, NIMH expects the program to continue to serve as a repository but also expects increased outreach efforts to increase the diversity of donors, and enhanced harmonization of donor-associated data across the network.

Priority Research Opportunities in Crisis Response Services

The purpose of this concept is to support research examining the effectiveness and implementation of crisis response services and the impact of state and local policy on the introduction, implementation, and outcomes of crisis response services, including those under the 988 rollout

Optimizing Behavioral Sleep Interventions for Adolescents and Young Adults

The proposed concept encourages effectiveness research that will adapt, optimize and test empirically supported behavioral interventions designed to address common sleep problems in adolescents and young adults with a mental health disorder or who are at risk for developing a mental health disorder.

NIMH Repository and Genomics Resource for Advancing Psychiatric Genetics

The objective of this concept is to sustain, develop and enhance a centralized national biorepository which, under the rubric of the NIMH Human Genetics Initiative (HGI), will serve as the principal biorepository for cellular and genetic studies of psychiatric disorders. The HGI’s primary mission includes improving and enriching psychiatric genomics research resources for broad sharing with the scientific community. The long-term goal of this concept is to augment and accelerate the scientific understanding of the genetic risk architecture underlying mental disorders through facilitating the sharing of biospecimens and associated metadata.

Streamlining Mental Health Interventions for Youth Living with HIV in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This concept aims to solicit research to target gaps in our knowledge about how best to address the mental health needs of youth living with HIV (YLWH) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). There are two main goals of the concept. The first is to increase the number of mental health interventions tailored to the unique needs of YLWH, both in terms of their developmental needs as well as the issues related to living with a chronic, stigmatized disease. The second goal is to ensure that interventions are streamlined for implementation in resource-limited settings.

Advancing HIV Testing, Prevention, and Care Through Pharmacists and Pharmacies

This concept aims to encourage research designed to further capacitate and scale the routine delivery of HIV testing, prevention, and care services through pharmacists and pharmacy settings, and support the advancement of training curricula that could enable pharmacy students, pharmacists, and pharmacies to effectively deliver HIV services with ease and equity.

Advancing Learning Health Care Research to Improve Mental Health Services and Outcomes

This concept aims to encourage research to advance data-driven learning health care in mental health treatment settings, leading to better knowledge and tools for implementing, sustaining, and optimizing evidence-based, high quality, and equitable services.

Mechanisms of Reciprocal Interactions between HIV Associated Neuroinflammation and Central Nervous System (CNS) Persistence: Implications in HIV Neuropathogenesis and Cure

The goal of this concept is to examine mechanisms of reciprocal interactions between HIV-associated neuroinflammation and central nervous system (CNS) persistence in the setting of excellent virologic control using novel CNS cell systems, organoid models, and single-cell technologies.

Novel Approaches to Understanding the Mechanisms of the Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) and Advancing Therapy Development

This concept aims to encourage research that will enhance knowledge of mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in dementia, leading to the development of novel treatments.

Developing Tools to Inform Treatment Selection in Depression

This concept aims to accelerate the development of sensitive and specific markers and tools (behavioral, physiological, and biological) to predict individual response among two or more existing therapeutics for depression.

Integrating Data and Implementation Science to Accelerate HIV Prevention, Treatment, and Care

This concept aims to encourage participatory data science and implementation science research to accelerate HIV prevention, treatment, and care.

Individually Measured Phenotypes to Advance Computational Translation (IMPACT)

This concept aims to encourage research using novel behavioral measures to foster a new generation of clinical signatures, leading toward precision assessment, prognosis, and treatment of mental disorders. The initial focus will be to (1) develop or optimize behavioral tasks that measure individual differences and demonstrate added utility for clinical prediction when combined with standard clinical diagnosis; (2) form a data infrastructure that can support computational approaches to build tools for clinical decision making. This research will involve one or more longitudinal cohorts established either through new data collection or by leveraging extant cohorts that have appropriate data structures.

Understanding Social Media and Youth Mental Health

This concept aims to encourage research on the impact of social media and technology on youth mental health. There is limited knowledge about the bidirectional relationship between social media and youth mental health. This concept provides an opportunity to understand relationships among social media behavior, social media engagement, social context, and youth mental health.

Innovations in HIV Prevention, Testing, Adherence, and Retention to Optimize HIV Prevention and Care Continuum Outcomes

This concept aims to encourage rigorous and innovative research on HIV testing, linkage to prevention or care, adherence, and retention to optimize HIV prevention and care, which is closely aligned with NIH Office of AIDS Research and NIMH Division of AIDS Research priorities.

Schizophrenia and Related Psychotic Disorders During Mid- to Late-Life

This concept aims to encourage translational research to better understand the emergence, trajectory, and outcomes of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders in mid- to late-life, and to identity targets for future development of prevention and treatment interventions.

Developing Quality Measures to Advance Mental Health Care Access and Outcomes

This concept aims to support the development, testing, validation, and implementation of measures to advance mental health care access, outcomes, and quality in the United States or other high-income countries, in addition to low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). To facilitate translation of findings into practice, this concept seeks to support the development and validation of measures and data collection that can be reviewed and endorsed by relevant regulatory or governing bodies.

Suicide Prevention Across the Lifespan in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This concept aims to address the gaps in our knowledge about suicide risk, protective factors, and suicide preventive interventions and strategies for people across the lifespan in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and to strengthen and sustain local research capacity. This concept would support innovative experimental (e.g., hybrid effectiveness-implementation research) and non-experimental (e.g., ecological studies, simulation studies) research to evaluate scalable and financially sustainable multilevel preventive interventions and strategies to reduce suicide risk (suicide ideation and behavior, including acts of self-harm and suicide) and promote resilience.

Novel Assays to Address Translational Gaps in Treatment Development

This initiative would address a translational gap in therapeutic discovery and development that exists between the preclinical screening pipeline and early experimental medicine studies in humans.

Understanding Developmental Processes in Youth Suicide

This concept aims to encourage research on the processes that contribute to suicide risk in youth in the United States.

NIMH Faculty Development Award to Promote Diversity in Mental Health Research

The goal of this concept is to enhance the diversity of the mental health research workforce by supporting early career faculty investigators from groups that are underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral, and social sciences who propose mentored research projects consistent with NIMH’s mission and research priorities.

Improving Mental Health of Mobile Populations through Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Implementation Approaches

This concept seeks to support research to improve diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and mental health services for mobile populations, such as refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and migrants.

Innovative Mental Health Services Research Not Involving Clinical Trials

The goal of this concept would be to support non-clinical trial mental health services research in high priority, but understudied areas where generating new knowledge can have high public health impact.

Expanding Collaborative Implementation Science for the End the Epidemic National Plan

This concept aims to encourage implementation science research to strengthen the evidence for effective interventions and implementation strategies that address social and structural determinants of health (SSDoH), reduce inequities, and ultimately improve HIV outcomes.

Mental Health Research Dissertation Grant to Enhance Workforce Diversity

This concept would provide continued support for a long-standing and successful program for doctoral students in the dissertation stage of graduate school. The program aims to continue enhancing the diversity of the mental health research workforce by providing dissertation level research support to individuals who are underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral, and social sciences (as defined by NIH) who are proposing projects consistent with the NIMH’s mission and research priorities.

Post-Acute Interventions to Optimize Long-Term Mental Health Outcomes in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The goal of this concept is to encourage research that improves post-acute mental health services in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and low-resource settings. Of specific interest is research that generates new information on the health system changes that could improve the scalability and sustainability of service provision.

Integrating Mental Health Care into Health Care Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries and Other Low-Resources Settings

The goal of this concept is to encourage implementation research to develop, optimize, and test innovative theory-based strategies to integrate mental and physical health care within health care systems in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) and other low-resource settings.

NIMH Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists (NIMH BRAINS)

This initiative aims to continue the successful NIMH Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists (NIMH BRAINS) program. This initiative is intended to encourage potentially transformative research from exceptional early-stage scientists. The NIMH BRAINS program plans to focus on research priorities and gap areas identified in the NIMH Strategic Plan for Research.

Neuron-Glia Computations Governing Complex Behaviors

The goal of this concept is to facilitate behavioral systems-level neuroscience research on neuron-glia interactions. There are major gaps in the understanding of how neuron-glia interactions enable complex behavior.

Addressing Mental Health Disparities Research Gaps: Aggregating and Mining Existing Data Sets for Secondary Analyses

This initiative seeks to encourage theory-based research targeting the reduction and elimination of mental health disparities in the United States. Given that there are many existing, untapped data resources, the purpose of this initiative is to provide an opportunity for investigators to integrate and analyze datasets in a cost-efficient manner to yield novel findings, identify key scientific gaps, and inform future research investments.

Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative: Brain-Behavior Quantification and Synchronization

This concept aims to: develop high resolution tools and analytic approaches that can precisely quantify species-appropriate behaviors as a multi-dimensional response and synchronize these with simultaneously recorded brain activity; build new conceptual and computational models of behavioral systems, with which to establish causal brain/behavior relationships and enable closed loop intervention development; and, establish a cross-disciplinary consortium of researchers to develop and disseminate new tools, ontologies, research designs, and ethical frameworks that will transform how mechanistic brain-behavioral research is conducted.

From Genes to Biology: Scalable Approaches for Biological Characterization of Mental Illness Risk Genes

One of the main bottlenecks in translating from genes associated with mental illnesses to disease biology lies in the lack of scalable experimental platforms that can extend the unbiased nature of gene discovery to the discovery of biological mechanisms. This initiative aims to fill that gap by optimizing and implementing new scalable technologies for functionally characterizing many genes in parallel to reveal mechanisms underlying disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

Improving Use of Novel HIV Prevention and Treatment Options through Behavioral and Communication Science

The goal of this concept is to encourage research to improve the use of novel HIV prevention and treatment options (i.e., methods other than a daily oral pill) through behavioral and communication science research.

NIMH Career Transition Award for Tenure-Track Intramural Investigators

This concept would allow for the re-issue of a long-standing career transition program to provide support for tenure-track intramural investigators at NIMH who aim to transition from the Division of Intramural Research Programs (IRP) to an independent research faculty position in the extramural community.

National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium

This concept aims to continue funding the NNTC as a critical resource for catalyzing high priority research in NeuroHIV, including studies to understand the mechanisms of HIV neuropathogenesis, aging with long-term HIV and ART, and research towards an HIV cure.

Research on Late-Life Suicide: Mechanisms and Future Treatment Targets

The goal of this initiative would be to solicit research that addresses predictors and mechanisms associated with late-life suicide. Specifically, this initiative would aim to address the link between social disconnection in late life and late-life suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions to Optimize Adolescent Mental Health Treatments

The goal of this concept is to encourage research that seeks to utilize JITAI augmentations to enhance the clinical impact of established digital health interventions on adolescent mental disorder symptoms and impairments.

Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative: Research on the Ethical Implications of Advancements in Neurotechnology and Brain Science

This concept aims to support efforts addressing potential ethical issues associated with research focused on the human brain and resulting from emerging technologies and advancements supported by the BRAIN Initiative.

Deciphering Neuroimmune Dysfunction in HIV Utilizing Human Cell Derived in vitro and in vivo Systems

This concept aims to support studies to better comprehend HIV associated central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction in people living with HIV (PLHIV) on antiretroviral therapy (ART) utilizing human cell-derived in vitro and in vivo model systems.

Understanding and Modifying Temporal Dynamics of Coordinated Neural Activity

The proximal goal of this concept is to test whether modifying specific temporal patterns of coordinated neural activity in vivo can improve cognitive, social, or affective processes. Examples of rhythmic, coordinated neural activity include oscillatory local field potentials (LFP), co-modulation across frequency bands, and precise timing of action potentials during specific LFP phases.

Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative: Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data

This concept supports the development of informatics tools for analyzing, visualizing, and integrating data related to the BRAIN Initiative to enhance our understanding of brain circuits. This concept is part of the ongoing development of an informatics infrastructure for the BRAIN Initiative. Other informatics programs include developing data standards that are needed to describe the new experiments created by or used in the BRAIN Initiative (RFA-MH-20-128) and creating the data infrastructures that would house the data from multiple experimental groups (RFA-MH-20-600).

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative: Secondary Analysis and Archiving of BRAIN Initiative Data

This concept aims to encourage support of secondary analysis of the large existing datasets relevant to the goals of the BRAIN Initiative. Support would be provided for innovative analysis of relevant existing datasets using conventional or novel analytic methods, data science techniques, and machine learning approaches. Support may also be requested to prepare and submit existing data into any of the BRAIN Initiative data archives. The goal of this concept is to promote studies that seek to significantly advance new discoveries and accelerate the pace of research of the BRAIN Initiative through harnessing big data and machine learning opportunities. Awardees would be expected to enhance the value of existing data, improve the overall data integration and analysis capability, and strengthen the rigor and reproducibility of BRAIN Initiative related data.

Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative: Development and Validation of Novel Tools to Probe Cell-Specific and Circuit-Specific Processes in the Brain

This concept aims to continue a BRAIN Initiative program that supports technology development to probe cell- and circuit-specific processes in the brain (RFA-MH-19-136). Relating cognition and behavior of humans and other animals to the functions of specific brain cells and circuits is challenging. Progress in this effort has been limited in part by the complexity, scale, and speed of brain networks. The goal of this concept is to continue supporting research on new technologies for the analysis of brain cells and circuits with greater clarity, scalability, and precision. This work may enable further study of brain circuitry underlying behavior.

Strengthening HIV Prevention Efforts among Women in the Southern U.S.

This initiative aims to increase the use of HIV prevention strategies among women in the Southern U.S. by developing and testing interventions to enhance uptake and adherence.

Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative Cell Census – Phase III

This concept aims to (1) generate comprehensive brain cell atlases that encompass molecular, anatomical, and functional annotations of brain cell types (neurons, glia, and other non-neuronal cells) in human and other species, thereby providing a framework to enable both basic neuroscience and brain disorders-focused research; (2) develop and use scalable technologies and multimodal assays to facilitate the large-scale brain cell census efforts; and (3) establish a broadly accessible data ecosystem to disseminate brain cell census data and knowledge.

Innovative Mental Health Services Research Not Involving Clinical Trials (R01)

This initiative is a reissue of the Innovative Mental Health Services Research Not Involving Clinical Trials (R01) program announcement, PAR-17-264. This initiative is intended to foster R01-level non-clinical trial mental health services research that aligns with Goal 4 of the NIMH Strategic Plan for Research: Strengthen the Public Health Impact of NIMH-Supported Research.

PROMOTID – PRomoting Outstanding MentOring: Training, Inclusion, and Diversity

This initiative will recognize NIMH-funded Principal Investigators with both an outstanding record of training individuals underrepresented in the biomedical workforce and with a continued commitment to these mentoring activities.

NIMH Mental Health and HIV/AIDS Research Centers

The proposed concept would be a reissue of the Division of the Division of AIDS Research (DAR) program announcements that support Center Core grants (P30) for HIV/AIDS Research Centers (ARCs) and Developmental Centers (D-ARCs). The goal of the initiative is to fund Centers that provide infrastructure for the development of high impact science in HIV/AIDS and mental health that is relevant to the NIMH mission. The intent of D-ARC support is that the Core activities will allow the D-ARC to compete successfully for a full ARC after the D-ARC award period.

NIMH Support for Clinical Trials Research

This effort aims to continue the manner in which NIMH solicits and conducts clinical trials research, emphasizing the experimental therapeutic approach to the treatment and prevention of mental illnesses across the lifespan. NIMH’s series of clinical trials Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) covers the intervention development pipeline, from first-in-human, early testing of new interventions, confirmatory efficacy trials, to effectiveness trials.

Systems-Level Interventions for Detecting and Preventing Suicide and Suicidal Behavior in At-Risk Youth

This initiative aims to support the development and testing of systems-level interventions targeting high-risk youth to reduce or prevent suicide and suicidal behavior in these populations. Populations identified with high suicide risk and high unmet service need include but are not limited to: youth in public service systems, racial/ethnic minority youth, sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth, rural youth, and youth with intersectional risk. Relevant settings include but are not limited to: education or training programs, housing programs, juvenile justice, and child welfare.

Identification of Positive Valence System Related Targets for Novel Suicide Prevention Approaches

The primary objective of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to advance translational research to better understand risk and resilience for suicide in the context of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework and the Positive Valence Systems (PVS) domain.

Prevention of Perinatal Depression: Improving Intervention Delivery for At-Risk Individuals

This FOA seeks to encourage research addressing major gaps identified in the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation statement concerning interventions to prevent perinatal depression.

Refinement and Testing of Service-Ready Interventions for Preschool Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

To solicit pilot effectiveness projects that apply a mechanism-based approach to the development and evaluation of deployment-focused preschool Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) interventions. Relevant interventions could consider the unique challenges associated with treating ADHD symptoms and impairments in children under the age of six Interventions may also focus on preventing or forestalling the emergence of co-occurring disorders or additional ADHD symptoms and impairments that predictably emerge later in development.

Cellular and Molecular Biology of Complex Brain Disorders

This initiative would encourage innovative research projects to address gaps where high confidence risk factors associated with complex brain disorders have been identified, but the basic neurobiology of those factors is poorly understood.

BRAIN Initiative: Data Archives for BRAIN Initiative

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Working GroupReport to the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director, BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision, as well as the more recent mid-course evaluation, The BRAIN Initiative 2.0: From Cells to Circuits, Toward Cures, call for NIH to create a data infrastructure for BRAIN Initiative data. This concept calls for a renewal of the data archive component of that infrastructure.

BRAIN Initiative: Next Generation Technologies for Brain Microconnectivity Analysis

This concept aims to seek research to develop and pilot next generation technologies for examining brain microconnectivity in multiple species as part of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.

BRAIN Initiative: Organizing Resources for Brain Cell Type-Specific Access and Manipulation Across Species

The goal of this concept is to evaluate molecular/genetic technologies and then create pilot production and distribution resources for cell type-specific access and manipulation reagents for several vertebrate species.

From Genomic Association to Causation: A Convergent Neuroscience Approach 2.0

This re-issued initiative aims to support studies that leverage the large and diverse datasets being generated across levels of analysis (e.g., genetic, neurobiological, clinical) in order to develop novel theoretical frameworks for multiscale modeling and in silico experiments.

Discovery of Probes for Novel Brain Targets

This initiative would complement existing NIMH-participating initiatives that aim to support research at multiple stages in the drug development pipeline, including assay development and screening (PAR-17-438); optimization and early preclinical discovery (PAR-19-146, PAR-19-147); and, the transition from early discovery to Phase I Clinical Trials (PAR-18-541, PAR-18-546).

Mood and Psychosis Symptoms During the Menopause Transition

The goal of this proposed initiative is to advance translational research to better understand the emergence and worsening of mood and psychotic disorders (e.g., PMD, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia) during the MT to identify targets for future development of novel treatment interventions.

Service-Ready Tools for Identification, Prevention, and Treatment of Suicide Risk

This initiative is intended to support the development and testing of optimized, service-ready tools to enhance suicide prevention by improving the identification and treatment of individuals at risk for suicide. Evidence-based approaches exist for reducing suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and death by suicide.

Digital Healthcare Interventions to Address the Secondary Health Effects of COVID-19 for Health Disparity and Vulnerable Populations

The intent of this trans-NIH initiative would be to invite research to determine the role and impact of digital health interventions (e.g., mobile health (mHealth), telemedicine and telehealth, health information technology, wearable devices) to address secondary health effects of the social, behavioral, and economic changes following the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among populations who experience health disparities and other vulnerable populations (e.g., essential medical personnel, emergency responders, and frontline workers in essential businesses or services; people who are residents of chronic care facilities, community-dwelling older adults, pregnant, children, with cognitive impairment or dementia; homeless; incarcerated or involved with the criminal justice system, experiencing substance use disorder or serious mental illness; with disabilities including visual, hearing, communication, or mobility impairment; and the uninsured).

Community Interventions to Address the Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic for Health Disparity and Vulnerable Populations

The intent of this trans-NIH initiative would be to invite research to evaluate the role and impact of community interventions for NIH-designated health disparity populations and other vulnerable groups to address 1) the impacts of mitigation strategies to prevent COVID-19 transmission; and 2) already implemented, new, or adapted interventions to address the adverse health consequences of the social, behavioral, and economic changes related to the pandemic.

Centers for Practice-Based Effectiveness and Services Research with Near-Term Impact

The goal of this initiative is to reissue and extend the NIMH Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness (ALACRITY) Research Centers program.

Limited Competition to Convert the CNS HIV Antiretroviral Therapy Effects Research (CHARTER) Study Cohort to a Research Resource Grant

The goal of this initiative is to convert the CNS HIV Antiretroviral Therapy Effects Research (CHARTER) cohort, a cohort of individuals living with HIV that have been followed for almost 20 years, to a stand-alone research resource.

Mental Health Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)

The goal of this initiative is to support the scientific work and research career development of exceptionally talented scientists who are in the early, formative stages of their careers and who plan to make a long-term career commitment to mental health research.

BRAIN Initiative Fellows: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship

This is a re-issue of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative Fellows: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32) funding opportunity announcement.

Standards to Define Experiments Related to the BRAIN Initiative

The goal of this concept is to support researchers in the development of standards that describe experimental protocols that are being conducted as part of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.

Optimizing Multi-Component Service Delivery Interventions for People with Opioid Use Disorder, Co-Occurring Conditions, and/or Suicide Risk (HEAL)

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in partnership with other NIH Institutes and Offices, intends to invite research that will optimize multi-component service delivery interventions for people with opioid use disorder (OUD) and co-occurring conditions, to include suicide risk.

HEAL Supplements to Improve the Treatment and Management of Common Co-Occurring Conditions and Suicide Risk in People Affected by the Opioid Crisis

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in partnership with other NIH Institutes and Offices, proposes to supplement relevant studies to improve the treatment and management of common co-occurring conditions and suicide risk in people affected by the opioid crisis.

Assessing Outcomes of Health System Suicide Risk Screening Programs

The goal of this initiative is to support assessment of suicide-related patient outcomes in health systems that implement wider suicide risk screening in their care settings.

HIV Infection of the CNS

The goal of this initiative is to encourage innovative research to comprehend the mechanisms and pathways involved in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 associated CNS disease in the context of viral suppression and to identify treatment strategies to alleviate CNS complications of HIV-1.

Effectiveness of Implementing Sustainable Evidence-Based Mental Health Practices in Low-Resource Settings to Achieve Equity in Outcomes for Traditionally Underserved Populations

The goal of this initiative is to encourage studies that develop and test the effectiveness of strategies for implementation and sustainable delivery of evidence-based mental health practices (EBPs) in settings where limited capital and human resources create barriers to care delivery, in order to improve mental health outcomes for underserved populations and reduce or eliminate health disparities.

Social Drivers of Mental Illnesses in Low- & Middle-Income Countries: Mechanisms and Pathways of Interventions for Youth

To better understand mechanisms and pathways by which interventions targeting social drivers of mental illnesses impact mental health outcomes for youth living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Fine-Mapping Genome-Wide Associated Loci to Identify Proximate Causal Mechanisms

The objective of this concept is to develop and apply resources and tools for the large-scale and systematic fine-mapping of serious mental disorders and related traits.

Behavioral Tasks Targeting Brain Subsystems Relevant to Anhedonia

This initiative seeks to develop task-based behavioral measures, which will be validated with neuroimaging and then used as behavioral readouts serving as a proxy for engagement of brain subsystems relevant to anhedonia.

Practice-Based Research for Implementing Scalable Evidence-Based Prevention Interventions in Primary Care Settings

The goal of this concept is to encourage practice-based research aimed at refining and testing developmentally-focused theory-based efficacious prevention interventions and to be scalable and sustainable for implementation in pediatric-serving primary care settings. This concept has an emphasis on underserved populations.

Mentoring Networks for Mental Health Research Education

This is a re-issue of a long standing R25 program announcement that aims to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs.

Mood Disorders in People Living with HIV: Mechanisms and Pathways

The purpose of this initiative is to support studies to better understand the interplay of biological, behavioral, emotional and psychosocial mechanisms and pathways that underlie mood disorders in people living with HIV (PLHIV).

Short Courses for Mental Health Research Education

This is a re-issue of a long standing R25 program announcement that aims to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research needs.

Research Education Programs for Psychiatry Residents

This is a re-issue of a long standing R25 program announcement that aims to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research needs.

Expanding Differentiated Care Approaches for Adolescents Living with HIV

The goal of this concept is to develop and test novel approaches to delivering differentiated care to adolescents who are living with HIV around the world.

Eradication of HIV-1 from Central Nervous System Reservoirs

The goal of this initiative is to study mechanisms of HIV-1 persistence and eradication strategies specifically focused on the central nervous system in the context of viral suppression.

Engineering Next-Generation Human Nervous System Microphysiological Systems

This concept encourages research directed toward developing next-generation human cell-derived microphysiological systems (MPS) and related assays that replicate complex nervous system architectures and physiology with improved fidelity over current capabilities.

Mental Health Consultation via Telehealth to Optimize Care for Emergency Department Patients with Suicide Risk

The goal of this proposed initiative is to identify feasible approaches to telehealth-supplied suicide prevention practices, and how this consultation affects patient suicide-related outcomes that include intentional and non-intentional injuries and mortality, and suicide related-health utilization patterns.

Post-Acute Interventions for the Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa

This concept seeks applications for projects to evaluate preliminary effectiveness of interventions targeting sustained and enhanced clinical response following acute treatment for anorexia nervosa (AN). In this pilot research phase, trials should be designed to evaluate the feasibility, tolerability, acceptability, safety, and target engagement, as well as potential effectiveness, with a deployment-focused approach to facilitate approaches that are scalable to community settings.

Laboratories to Optimize Digital Health

The goal of this initiative is to foster research collaborations between academic researchers and digital health technology developers to test strategies to increase the reach, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of digital mental health interventions.

Renewal of the Development and Application of PET and SPECT Imaging Ligands as Biomarkers for Drug Discovery and for Pathophysiological Studies of CNS Disorders

The goal of this initiative is to encourage the development of novel radioligands for positron emission tomography (PET) or single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging to study the pathophysiology and treatment of brain disorders.

Genetic Architecture of Mental Disorders in Ancestrally Diverse Populations

The goal of this initiative is to support the collection and genomic characterization of cohorts with severe mental illness from diverse ancestral backgrounds. The focus of this initiative will be the collection of large patient cohorts of non-Caucasian or admixed ancestries in the U.S. and around the globe. Study designs using case-control, parent-offspring trios, nuclear families or a combination thereof will be supported.

Autism Biomarkers for Clinical Trials

The goal of this initiative is to encourage the necessary next stages of development and validation of biomarkers with putative value for use in clinical trials for treatments of the core social deficits of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), including multi-site testing and validation for a specific ‘context of use’ (e.g., diagnostic, enrichment, stratification) as a drug development tool.

Implementation Research in HRSA Ryan White Clinics: Screening and Treatment for Mental Illnesses to further the National “Ending the HIV Epidemic” (EtHE) Goals

The goal of this initiative is to enhance screening and treatment for mental illnesses in HRSA Ryan White clinics through implementation research, to advance the goals of the “Ending the HIV Epidemic” (EtHE) initiative.

BRAIN Initiative Models of the Developing Human Nervous System

The goal of this BRAIN Initiative is to stimulate basic research to develop next-generation human cell-derived assays, including those involving human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), with improved fidelity to complex human brain, spinal cord, and/or sensory end organ circuit physiology, particularly with respect to developmental trajectories.

Accelerating Treatment Development Research in Clinical High Risk for Psychosis

This concept proposes to establish a network of academic and community sites that can rapidly recruit well-characterized cohorts of help-seeking individuals who meet criteria for “clinical high risk” (CHR) for psychosis. The multi-site network will conduct collaborative studies to test and validate biological measures and prediction algorithms to support experimental medicine trials involving CHR participants.

Identification, Validation, and Manipulation of Neural Circuits Related to Mental Illness, in Non-human Primates

The goal of this initiative is to support the identification, validation and manipulation of neural circuits that underlie cognitive, emotional, and social processes impacted in mental illnesses. The initiative is focused on probing psychiatrically relevant behavior through studies in non-human primates. This initiative is intended to complement existing NIMH-funded preclinical investigation of circuits which have often focused on smaller brains.

Utilizing Invasive Recording and Stimulating Opportunities in Humans to Advance Neural Circuitry Understanding of Mental Health Disorders

The goal of this initiative is to encourage researchers to utilize invasive neural recording opportunities in humans to study the neural circuity underlying mental health disorders.

BRAIN Initiative: Non-Invasive Neuromodulation - New Tools and Techniques for Spatiotemporal Precision

The goal of this initiative is to support grant applications in two related but distinct areas. The first area involves developing and testing novel tools and methods of neuromodulation that go beyond the existing forms of neural stimulation. The second area involves the optimization of existing stimulation methods.

BRAIN Initiative: Marmosets for Neuroscience Research

One of the goals of this concept is to increase the number of marmosets that are available to the neuroscience research community. The second major goal of this concept is to continue the development of the tools and technologies for transgenic manipulation and characterization of marmosets.

Renewal of the Silvio O. Conte Centers for Basic Neuroscience or Translational Mental Health Research

The purpose of the Conte Centers program is to support interdisciplinary teams of researchers engaged in novel, creative, and integrated experimental approaches to address high-risk, high-impact scientific questions in either basic neuroscience research or in translational research that will significantly advance the state of the science in brain and behavioral research to ultimately provide the foundation for understanding mental disorders and/or transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses, as well as developing data and other research resources that are available to the scientific community to further advance research in this field.

Renewal of the National Cooperative Drug/Device Discovery/Development Groups (NCDDG) for the Treatment of Mental or Substance Use Disorders or Alcohol Addiction

The goal of the NCDDG Program is to advance the discovery, preclinical development, and early proof of concept testing in humans of new pharmacologic and neuromodulatory approaches to treat mental disorders, substance use disorders (SUDs), or alcohol addiction, and to develop novel ligands and circuit-engagement devices as tools to further characterize existing or to validate new drug/device targets.

Adapting Immunotherapy Strategies for Targeting HIV Reservoirs in the CNS: Potential Benefits and Risks

The goal of this initiative is to adapt immunotherapy-based strategies to target viral reservoirs in the central nervous system (CNS) and to examine the potential risks of applying such technologies to the CNS.

Building an Evidence Base for Rapid Acting Interventions for Severe Suicide Risk

The goal is to expand the evidence base for fast-acting treatments for youth and adults with severe suicide risk, testing existing and novel interventions.

Reducing the Duration of Untreated Psychosis in the United States

This initiative would support research that tests practical, reproducible strategies for substantially reducing the duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) among persons with first-episode psychosis (FEP) in real-world U.S. settings.

NIH NeuroBioBank

The NIH-funded NeuroBioBank (NBB) was established in September 2013 as a national resource for investigators utilizing human post-mortem brain tissue and related biospecimens for their research to understand conditions of the nervous system. We seek to begin a recompetition for fiscal year 2019 to continue this largely successful program. The envisioned NBB 2.0 would benefit from lessons learned in the first iteration and would aim to increase the number of brains collected and distributed.

Secondary Data Analysis to Examine Long-Term and Cross-Over Effects of Prevention Interventions

The goal of this initiative is to encourage research to integrate/harmonize existing data sets from preventive intervention trials implemented early in life to: 1) examine risk and protective factors relevant to later mental health outcomes in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood; and 2) determine whether preventive interventions delivered earlier in life have long-term effects, and cross-over effects (e.g., unanticipated beneficial effects), on important mental health outcomes, including serious mental illness (e.g., depression, anxiety, suicide ideation and behaviors, psychosis behaviors).

Computational Methods for Integrative Analysis of Multi-omic and Single-cell Data to Elucidate Cell Type-specific Gene Regulatory Architecture for Mental Disorders

The goal of this initiative is to encourage research that will advance our understanding of brain cell type-specific gene regulation to elucidate the pathogenesis of mental disorders.

Understanding the Mechanisms of Neuropsychiatric Side Effects and Neurological Toxicities of HIV Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART)

The goal of this initiative is to encourage innovative research to identify risk-factors and understand mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric side effects and neurological toxicities associated with HIV treatment, and to identify modifiable targets or individuals at high risk for timely interventions.

Renewal of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

The primary goal is to create a diverse and well characterized cohort to understand how experiences in childhood interact with each other and a child’s changing biology to affect brain development and social, behavioral, mental and physical health outcomes.

The Trans-NIH baby Brain Cognitive Development (bBCD) Study

The goal of this project is to understand the long-term impacts of pre- and perinatal drug and adverse environmental (e.g., parental neglect, physical abuse) exposures on brain development and social/behavioral/academic achievement and how these in turn impact risk for substance use and mental illness.

Implementation Research to Inform and Enhance President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Delivery

The goal of this initiative is to support implementation science research that will inform delivery and scale-up of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) at President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) sites.

Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Clinical Trials to Optimize the Collaborative Care Model for Patients with Opioid Use Disorders and Mental Health Conditions

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in partnership with other NIH Institutes, proposes research to adapt collaborative care – a specific service delivery model for treating mental/behavioral health conditions in primary care settings – to meet the needs of individuals with opioid use disorders (OUDs) and co-occurring mental health conditions.

Applying Computationally-Defined Behaviors for Back-Translation in Psychiatry

The objective of this clearance is to apply computational approaches to develop parametrically detailed and back-translatable behavioral assays across mental-health relevant domains of function.

Promoting Reductions in Intersectional StigMa (PRISM) to Improve the HIV Prevention Continuum

The goals of this initiative are twofold: 1) to advance measurements of intersectional stigma (multiple stigmatized identities) and examine the mechanisms and pathways by which it is a barrier to HIV testing and linkage to prevention; and 2) to develop and test interventions to reduce intersectional stigma and improve the uptake of HIV testing and linkage to ongoing HIV prevention among key populations at substantial risk for HIV infection.

Building in vivo Preclinical Measures of Circuit Engagement for Therapeutic Development

The primary goal of this initiative is to develop non-invasive measures of brain activity in preclinical species for assessing functional domains that may be impaired in mental illnesses.

Novel Imaging Approaches for Detection of Persistent HIV in the CNS, HIV-Associated Inflammation, and Molecular Pathology

The goal of this initiative is to encourage the use of current and novel imaging technologies to detect persistent, latent, and/or reactivated HIV, HIV viral products and associated pathology/inflammation in the central nervous system (CNS) in virally suppressed individuals on ART.

Addressing the Role of Violence on HIV Care and Viral Suppression

The goals of this initiative are to (1) advance understanding of the role of violence on engagement and retention in HIV care, HIV medication adherence, and viral suppression, and (2) develop and test novel interventions to improve HIV outcomes for individuals who have experienced violence.

Research to Inform Stepped-Care Interventions for Persons at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis

The goals of this concept are to encourage research to test the feasibility and effectiveness of a stepped-care intervention model; to improve symptoms and functioning for individuals at “clinical high risk” (CHR) for psychosis; and to reduce rates of transition to a psychotic disorder.

Early Screening for Autism Spectrum

The primary goal of this initiative is to encourage research that would develop and validate new screening methods for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that can be used in infancy (0-12 months of age).

Development and Validation of Technologies for Rapid Isolation and Characterization of Extracellular Vesicles of Central Nervous System Origin

This concept was developed by the NIMH to contribute to the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, a framework to enhance cooperative activities among NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices that jointly support neuroscience-related research.

Computational Models for Validating Dimensional Approaches to Psychopathology

The primary goal of this initiative is to apply sophisticated computational (theory- and data-driven) approaches to research on the etiology and pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders that utilizes a dimensional framework (e.g., Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)).

Novel Approaches to Understanding the Mechanisms of the Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Alzheimer’s and Advancing Therapy Development

The goal of this initiative is to encourage research that will enhance knowledge of mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in dementia so as to develop novel treatments.

The NIMH Psychoactive Drug Screening Program (PDSP)

The goal of the NIMH PDSP is to provide the research community with access to broad screening capabilities in the form of pharmacological and functional assays.

Dysregulation and Proximal Risk for Suicide

The goal of this initiative is to encourage research to understand the mechanisms by which dysregulation dynamically interacts with cognition and mood to confer imminent risk for suicide, and to identify modifiable targets for timely interventions during high risk periods.

NIMH Career Enhancement Award to Advance Autism Services for Adults and Transition-Age Youth

The goal of this initiative is to rapidly increase the capacity of the NIMH investigator workforce to develop and test the effectiveness of a broad range of services that address the needs of adults and transition-age youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

A Practice-Based Research Network to Transform Mental Health Care: Science, Service Delivery & Sustainability

The goal of this initiative is to support a practice-based research network to transform the development, delivery, and sustainability of evidence-based mental health practices and services.

Paving the Way for Assessing Novel Pediatric Interventions

Pediatric clinical trials that investigate drug candidates in psychiatry are rare. Yet these trials are critical for evaluating safety, tolerance, efficacy, and optimal dosing in developing children. Molecular targets most relevant to the developing central nervous system (CNS) may be very different from ones appropriate in treating psychiatric disorders in adults. It is important to establish a pediatric trial model where drug candidates can be tested safely, even if the drug candidate has not received formal approval for any psychiatric indication in adults.

Rare Genetic Syndromes as a Window into the Genetic Architecture of Mental Disorders

This initiative would foster collaborative and coordinated efforts to characterize the underlying genetic architecture of diverse neuropsychiatric phenotypes within and across rare genetic syndromes and identify the shared genetic risk with idiopathic neuropsychiatric disorders.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Decoding and Modulating Behaviorally-Activated Brain Circuits

The goal of this initiative is to solicit applications in the area of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) applied to NIMH’s mental health priorities. Current machine learning approaches focus on classifying and predicting brain and behavioral signals but their solutions still remain uninterpretable. XAI would retain prediction accuracy while endowing these models with explanatory features.

Leveraging Electronic Medical Records for Psychiatric Genetic Research

The purpose of this initiative is to support projects that implement creative and robust molecular epidemiologic approaches that leverage existing electronic medical records (EMR) from large, population-based cohorts.

Altered Neural Pathways, Receptors and Networks in HIV-induced CNS Dysfunction

The goal of this initiative is to encourage research on understanding altered neuronal networks and pathways in HIV-1 induced central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction in the context of viral suppression and antiretroviral therapy (ART), by utilizing novel research models and diagnostic tools to bridge the gap between pathogenesis research and observed clinical outcomes.

Mobile and Connected Health Interventions to Improve Care Continuum and Health Outcomes among Youth with HIV

The goal of this initiative is to develop and test the next generation of interventions delivered through mobile health (mHealth) technology to improve testing, linkage to care, retention in care, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) medication adherence among youth living with human immunodeficiency virus (YLWH).

HIV Healthcare Systems Approaches to Improve Viral Suppression (HH-SAIVS)

The purpose of this initiative is to identify, develop, and test healthcare system interventions, or healthcare delivery changes, that could improve human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral suppression.

NIMH Center for Genomic Research Resources for Advancing Psychiatric Genetics

The objective of this initiative is to sustain a centralized national biorepository which, under the rubric of the NIMH Human Genetics Initiative (HGI), will serve as the principal biorepository for genetic studies of psychiatric disorders.

Personalized Mental Health Navigator to Promote Early Engagement, Linkage and Coordination of Needed Mental Health Services for Children and Adolescents

This initiative proposes to develop and test the effectiveness of a navigator model designed to promote early engagement, linkage and coordination of mental health treatment and services for children and adolescents who are identified with early onset mental illness symptoms, or are at high risk for developing mental illnesses.

Limited Competition for Renewal of the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium

This initiative aims to support the continuation of the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium (NNTC).

Transdisciplinary Research Centers to Advance Clinical Practice in Mental Health

The goal of this initiative is to support transdisciplinary teams of clinical and mental health services researchers, behavioral and social scientists, health information and communications technologists, health systems engineers, decision scientists, and mental health stakeholders (e.g., service users, family members, clinicians, payers) to engage in high-impact studies that will significantly advance clinical practice and generate knowledge to fuel transformation of mental health care in the United States.

Research to Support the Reduction and Elimination of Mental Health Disparities

The goal of this initiative is to foster research across the NIMH Strategic Objectives that targets the reduction and elimination of mental health disparities among racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

NIMH Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists (BRAINS)

The goal of the NIMH Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists (BRAINS) program is to support the research and research career development of outstanding, exceptionally productive scientists who are in the early, formative stages of their careers and who plan to make a long term career commitment to research in specific mission areas of the NIMH.

Role of Myeloid Cells in Persistence and Eradication of HIV-1 Reservoirs from the Brain

The goal of this initiative is to stimulate research on mechanisms of HIV persistence in myeloid cells and develop strategies to target this reservoir in the central nervous system (CNS).

Applied Research towards Zero Suicide Healthcare Systems

The goal of this initiative is to reduce the burden of suicide events in healthcare systems through intervention effectiveness and implementation research. Specifically, this initiative aims to expand the evidence base for the Zero Suicide project’s practice-to-research efforts, creating a stronger basis for dissemination and large-scale implementation of effective risk detection, intervention, and service delivery strategies for suicide prevention.

Improving Outcomes Associated with Mental Health First Aid

The goal of this initiative is to further the evidence base for Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), a widely disseminated mental health course in which non-mental health professionals are trained to identify the signs and symptoms of mental illness, in order to facilitate early detection and intervention. Despite wide dissemination, there is little evidence of the program’s impact on referral to and receipt of mental health services or a reduction in mental health symptoms.

The Neural Mechanisms of Integrated Social and Emotional Representation

This initiative aims to stimulate and support research investigating the neural circuits and dynamic patterns of brain activity involved in the perception, interpretation, and representation of multi-dimensional social and emotional cues.

Reducing the Burden of Suicide among American Indian and Alaska Native Youth

The overall goal of this initiative is to stimulate research focused on preventing suicide and promoting resilience in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth.

Adult Maturational Changes and Dysfunctions in Emotion Regulation

This initiative aims to stimulate mechanistic research on how age- and sex-related changes in emotion processing over the adult life course interact with and may inform the understanding of affective dysregulation in adult mental disorders.

Pragmatic Strategies for Assessing Psychotherapy Quality in Practice

This initiative is intended to support the development and testing of pragmatic tools and strategies for measuring the quality of psychotherapy delivered in practice settings.

Preventing Suicide in the Juvenile Justice System

The goal of this initiative is to support research on how to use the structure and legal leverage of the juvenile justice system to detect and prevent suicidality in youth who come in contact with that system.

Understanding and Addressing the Multi-Level Influences on the Use of HIV Prevention Strategies among Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

This initiative aims to: (1) enhance our understanding of the multiple factors that influence HIV prevention strategy use among adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa, by looking at the multiple levels of influence on adolescent girls and young women’s behavior (i.e., individual, peer, partner, family, and community, as well as cultural and social norms) that may influence uptake and adherence; and, (2) develop and test novel interventions to address these factors and enhance the uptake and adherence to HIV prevention strategies among adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Improving the HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Cascade

The objective of this initiative is to develop and test interventions to improve the screening, engagement, and retention of high-risk populations in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical care, and to support both adherence to PrEP drug regimens and persistence on PrEP drug regimens among persons at high-risk for HIV infection in the United States.

First-Generation RDoC Measurement Elements

This initiative aims to develop and implement an operational template for including standard data elements in Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-themed research, and to produce an initial, provisional set of recommended standard measures for each Domain and Construct within the RDoC Matrix, with the goal of facilitating data sharing. Where standard measures do not current exist, this initiative aims to support research to develop new measures.

Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET): A Learning Healthcare System for Early Serious Mental Illness

This initiative aims to create a national Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) among treatment centers that offer evidence-based specialty care to persons experiencing subthreshold psychotic symptoms or a first episode of psychosis.

Going to Scale with Mental Health Innovations in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This initiative aims to (a) support research on scaling up delivery of science-based mental health interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); and (b) enhance regional capacity to conduct mental health research. Support will be provided for teams composed of research institutions, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, providers, and mental health advocates to conduct state-of-the-science mental health services implementation research. Studies will evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of strategies for large-scale, sustainable delivery of science-based mental health interventions with demonstrated effectiveness.

Lifespan Human Connectome Project: Children and Adolescents

The goal of this initiative is to extend the experimental protocols developed through the Human Connectome Project (HCP) to children and adolescents to investigate the structural and functional changes that occur in the brain during typical development. Expansion of the HCP to include a broad range of subjects has the potential to significantly enhance the clinical relevance of the data and provide developmental benchmarks for understanding pathological processes in the etiology of human brain disorders.

Adaptation/Optimization of Technology (ADOPTech) to Support Social Functioning

This initiative aims to support the development and testing of new, cutting-edge technologies to enhance functioning in individuals with social impairments. Projects funded under this mechanism would create “social prosthetics”, or devices that would augment performance in this domain.

Connectome Coordination Facility

The goal of this initiative is to: (1) maintain a central data repository for Human Connectome data; (2) create a helpdesk service to answer questions from investigators who are trying to collect data that are compatible with the existing Human Connectome data; and, (3) to serve, in a limited capacity, as a quality control for new data that are being deposited.

Biomarker Development and Validation: Establishing Standards of Evidence for their Context of Use in Clinical Trials

This initiative is intended to encourage the necessary later stages of development and validation of biomarkers with putative value for use in clinical trials, including multi-sites testing and validation for regulatory ‘context of use’ (e.g., diagnostic, enrichment, stratification).

Novel Assays to Address Translational Gaps in Treatment Development

This initiative addresses a translational gap in therapeutic discovery and development that exists between the preclinical screening pipeline and early experimental medicine studies in humans. Support would be provided for collaborative teams focused on developing, evaluating, and optimizing clinically meaningful and biologically-based measures that tap into functional domains to inform therapeutic development. Studies would evaluate the alignment or divergence of measures across preclinical screening and into healthy humans. Ideally, the initiative would illuminate the types of preclinical data and approaches that may be useful (or not useful) in predicting effects in humans based on biological conservation of signaling pathways and circuits, and provide tools needed to test novel therapeutic targets or mechanisms in animals and in humans.

Methodologies to Enhance Understanding of HIV-Associated Social Determinants

This initiative aims to support formative work and methodological innovations to build effective interventions that will address or mitigate the impact of social determinants that drive negative HIV-related outcomes. Mechanisms that may underlie these social determinants include factors at individual, social, and cultural levels.

Improving Mental Health of Populations with Access to Cutting-edge Technologies (IMPACT)

This initiative aims to support the research, development, and testing of technology-based solutions focused on the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.

For a More Targeted and Safer Use of Antipsychotics in Youth

The goal of this initiative is to develop and test for effectiveness a treatment algorithm to manage severe mood and behavior dysregulation in non-psychotic children and adolescents for whom antipsychotics are commonly prescribed in the community.

Monitoring Antiretroviral Adherence to Improve HIV Treatment and Prevention

The aims of this initiative are to improve treatment for HIV/AIDS and HIV prevention by advancing: (i) Methods for real-time or prospective monitoring of oral ARV adherence (antiretroviral therapy [ART], pre-exposure prophylaxis [PrEP]); (ii) Timely and targeted delivery of interventions when adherence monitoring reveals deficits; and, (iii) Predictive models that estimate current risk of viral breakthrough or HIV infection for a given individual based on ART adherence monitoring and related data.

Psychiatric Gene Networks: Solving the Molecular Puzzle of Psychiatric Disorders

This initiative will support the application of cutting-edge computational, bioinformatics, network, predictive modeling, systems biology, and experimental approaches to identify and validate novel genetic factors and molecular networks underlying susceptibility to serious mental illnesses, through leveraging existing diverse multi-scale datasets.

Exosomes and HIV Neuropathogenesis

The goal of this initiative is to stimulate further research on the central role of exosomes in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). Specifically, this initiative encourages studies addressing the contribution of exosomes in modulating chronic inflammation in HAND, in addition to studies exploring the potential use of exosomes in the delivery of central nervous system (CNS)-targeted therapeutics.

Phenotypic Manifestations of Rare Variations Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

The goal of this initiative is to estimate population prevalence of rare variants associated with neurodevelopmental disorders using very large, unselected populations (epidemiologic cohorts), and conduct in-depth clinical assessments of variant carriers to determine penetrance, range of associated phenotypes, and genotype-by-environment interactions.

Secondary Data Analyses to Explore RDoC Domains

This initiative aims to support secondary analyses of existing datasets, by leveraging clinical research data to investigate specific domains within the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project or test novel hypotheses that are consistent with RDoC.

First-Generation RDoC Standard Data Elements

This initiative aims to develop and implement an operational template for including standard data elements in Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-themed research, and produce an initial set of recommended, provisional standard data elements.

Development of a BrainSpan RNA-seq Browser

This initiative aims to create an RNA-seq web browser for the data contained in the BrainSpan Atlas, an NIMH-funded project that provides a comprehensive atlas of human brain development including high resolution images and RNA sequence data.

Toward Early Prediction of Psychosis: Collaborative Research on Developmental Risk in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome

This initiative aims to support a collaborative, multi-site, prospective longitudinal study to track neurodevelopmental trajectories and to collect biomarkers in children and adolescents at high risk for psychosis by virtue of having 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (DS).

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Heterogeneity and Translation

NIMH is proposing multiple efforts to address the challenges of heterogeneity and translation in post-traumatic stress conditions. This initiative involves two related but distinct components: to interrogate mechanisms responsible for subtypes of impairment in small scale translational experiments; and to acquire longitudinal and dimensional data on emergence and course of post-traumatic clinical phenomena to enhance early prediction and classification of conditions and identify targets for prevention.

Imaging Data and Biomarkers

The key goal of this initiative is to find imaging biomarkers related to mental illness or the heterogeneity within diagnostic groups. Two different approaches are proposed: add data from subjects with mental illness to the Human Connectome Project and explore the most effective ways to use existing images and image repositories.

Services Research for Autism Spectrum Disorder across the Lifespan (ServASD)

The goal of this initiative is to support research to develop and test the effectiveness of services strategies to improve functional outcomes and quality of life for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at three key life stages: early childhood, transition from youth to adulthood, and adulthood.

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