has psychiatric research money gone almost all to drugs, neuroscience and genetics?
“We have spent all our monies on drugs, on neuroscience, and on genetics.”
a guest, a historian of psychiatry said on Lex Fridman Podcast, 2026-09-21, at 00:37. hear it in context →
first, the part that holds
the speaker has the main point right for the largest public funder of psychiatric research. a 2016 editorial by a group of psychiatric researchers in the british journal of psychiatry reported that since 2012 only about 15% of the US national institute of mental health budget went to services and interventions research (HIV/AIDS excluded), with the other 85% going to basic and translational neuroscience.
what we found when we went and looked
the clearest figure we could read is the 85/15 split above: about 85% of the US national institute of mental health budget went to basic and translational neuroscience and about 15% to non-HIV services and interventions research. the editorial took that figure from the institute's open council meetings and gave no formal citation. an invited commentary in the same issue, citing a UK charity's funding report, put US research spending tilted toward neurobiology at about 85%, against about 33% in the UK. so the neuroscience-and-genetics part holds for the US. two parts don't. "drugs" doesn't show up as a big slice in any record we read: the 15% bucket that includes treatment research is small, and it covers drug and non-drug work together. and "all our monies" is now out of date: the institute itself says that since 2016 the share going to therapeutics development and services research has risen every year.
assertion by assertion
| assertion | verdict | what the record says |
|---|---|---|
| most public psychiatric research money has gone to neuroscience and genetics | confirmed | US national institute of mental health, 2012 to about 2015: about 85% of the budget went to basic and translational neuroscience, and about 15% to non-HIV services and interventions research. the figure was presented at open council meetings and the editorial gives no formal citation. note that the 85% is simply everything left over after the 15%, so it may include work that isn't strictly neuroscience. [1][2] |
| a large share of research money has gone to drugs (drug development) | unverifiable | nothing we read breaks out drug development as a share of psychiatric research money. at the institute, treatment research sits inside the roughly 15% services and interventions bucket, alongside non-drug work, so drugs cannot be the bulk of that budget. company spending on drug development is private and does not appear in these public portfolio figures. [1][3] |
| psychosocial research gets little by comparison | confirmed | psychosocial work falls inside the roughly 15% bucket for services and interventions, and that bucket also includes drug trials. so psychosocial research's own share is 15% at most, and very likely less. [1] |
| 'all' of the money, as an ongoing state of affairs | overstated | the institute reports that since 2016 the share going to therapeutics development and services research has risen year over year, and the share going to disease-related basic research has fallen. it also says its share spent on clinical research over the past decade is similar to that of the NIH overall. the tilt is real, but it isn't 'all', and it has been shrinking. [3] |
| the tilt toward biology is stronger in the US than in the UK | confirmed | the BJP invited commentary, citing a UK charity's funding landscape report, says about 33% of UK mental health research spending goes to underpinning brain science, against about 85% in the US going to neurobiological research. [2] |
both directions
for the speaker: for the US, the record backs the direction and roughly the size of the speaker's claim. 85% to basic and translational neuroscience against about 15% to services and interventions is a heavy tilt. the 2016 editorial was written by psychiatric researchers, not outside critics, and it described intervention funding as 'dwarfed by neuroscience-related investments'. an independent UK-sourced comparison gives the same 85% figure for US neurobiological research. the global grant-mapping paper in lancet psychiatry (2021) found mental health research funding flat over 2015-19 and very unevenly spread across regions.
against: first, 'drugs' are lumped in with the side that got the money, but in the institute's figures treatment research, drug and non-drug together, sits in the small bucket. second, 'all' is too strong: 15% is not zero. third, the institute's own portfolio review shows the share for therapeutics development and services research rising every year since 2016, so the picture from 2012-15 no longer describes the present. fourth, the UK split is far less tilted (about 33% to brain science), so the claim does not hold for every country.
what this cannot say
the 85/15 figure comes from slides shown at council meetings, as reported in an editorial; we did not read the underlying spreadsheet. the 85% is everything outside services and interventions research, so it probably includes work that isn't strictly neuroscience or genetics. we could not fetch the year-by-year percentages from the institute's 2022 portfolio analysis; we read only its summary of the trend. we also could not read the category breakdown in the global grant-mapping paper; its abstract, which we did read, reports totals and geography but not research types. none of the public data covers what companies spend on drug development. we did not find a source that measures psychosocial research as its own category of funding.
sources, each one fetched and read
- Rethinking funding priorities in mental health research. British Journal of Psychiatry, 2016;208(6):507-9. PMID 27251688 What we read there: "yearly total investment in non-HIV/AIDS services and interventions research since 2012 comprises ~15% of the NIMH budget, with basic and translational neuroscience research accounting for the remaining 85%." the figure is attributed to open-access council meetings, with no formal citation. Fetched 2026-10-25 (HTTP 200). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/rethinking-funding-priorities-in-mental-health-research/3D8B174D491BFADD07071F7611B2638F
- Invited commentary on … Rethinking funding priorities in mental health research. British Journal of Psychiatry, 2016;208(6):510-1. PMID 27251689 What we read there: "33% of the annual research spend for mental illnesses is on underpinning brain sciences, although the balance is more favourable in the UK (about 33% v. 85% in the US towards neurobiological research)," citing a UK charity's mental health research funding landscape report. Fetched 2026-10-25 (HTTP 200). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/rethinking-funding-priorities-in-mental-health-research/87514094E016406C249017BA4C9A542D
- National Institute of Mental Health, Inside NIMH, Spring 2022 (portfolio balance section) What we read there: "Since 2016, there has been a year-over-year relative increase in the proportion of funding going to therapeutics development and services research... and a decrease in the proportion of funding going to disease-related basic research." also says NIMH's proportional investment in clinical research over the past decade is similar to that of NIH overall. Fetched 2026-10-25 (HTTP 200). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research/research-funded-by-nimh/inside-nimh/2022-spring-inside-nimh
- Accounting for mental health research funding: developing a quantitative baseline of global investments. Lancet Psychiatry, 2021. PMID 33242400 (abstract via NCBI E-utilities) What we read there: reports "a flat and stable trend over the years 2015-19 and highly unequal geographical distribution of funding" for mental health research grants; the abstract does not give shares by research type. Fetched 2026-10-25 (HTTP 203). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33242400/
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