NIMH Funding History

The graph above shows NIMH’s funding history in actual dollars and constant FY 2017 dollars. The FY 2025 President’s

Budget request is $2.5 billion. Figures include funding provided through the 21st Century Cures Act.

* Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2022). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the

United States: Results from the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP22-07-01-005, NSDUH Series H-57).

** Awarded number of grants may be different than other tables due to the inclusion of Cures carryover funding in other tables.

NIMH annually supports more than 3,000 

research grants and contracts at universities, 

academic health centers, and other research 

institutions across the country and around the 

world.

NIMH Quick Facts

In FY 2023, NIMH awarded grants to 99 

unique early-stage investigators and 180 

investigators with no other National 

Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding.

NIMH awarded 579 new and competing 

research project grants in FY 2023, with an 

estimated application success rate of 22 

percent.**

The NIMH Intramural Research Program 

supports approximately 600 scientists, the 

majority of whom work on the NIH campus in 

Bethesda, Maryland. 

In 2021, there were an estimated 14.1 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with serious mental 

illness. This number represented 5.5% of all U.S. adults.*

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is the lead federal agency for 

research on mental disorders. NIMH’s mission is to transform the understanding and 

treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for 

prevention, recovery, and cure. 

NIMH conducts and supports biomedical and behavioral research, health services 

research, research training, and health information dissemination with respect to the 

causes, diagnosis, treatment, management, and prevention of mental illnesses. 

NIMH is guided by its Strategic Plan for Research, a roadmap for the Institute’s 

research priorities, spanning fundamental science to public health impact. Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. 

Director of NIMH

FY 2025 Budget Fact Sheet
Contact Us

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NIH Publication No. 24-MH-8199

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Launched in 2019, EPINET is a learning health care system 

for early psychosis, aimed at enhancing coordinated specialty 

care to improve early identification, diagnosis, clinical assessment, intervention effectiveness, service delivery, and health 

outcomes. EPINET now has 8 regional scientific hubs and has 

enrolled approximately 4,000 participants from more than 

100 clinics across 17 states. To foster knowledge sharing and 

promote accessible early psychosis care resources, the EPINET 

National Data Coordinating Center launched a web portal, 

making the EPINET Core Assessment Battery available to all 

early psychosis care clinicians to assess key domains of early 

psychosis, recovery, and treatment.

In May 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released an 

Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, calling 

for swift, multi-sector action to maximize the benefits and 

reduce the risk of harm posed by social media on the 

mental health of children and adolescents. Recognizing 

these risks, NIMH is supporting research on understanding 

bidirectional relationships between social media use and 

adolescent mental health, psychiatric symptoms, and risk or 

resilience for psychopathology. For example, NIMH-funded 

researchers are investigating: connections between social 

media use and disordered eating; effects of early 

smartphone use; and, social media use in minoritized youth. 

Looking forward, there is a need to identify risk and 

protective factors for technology and digital media use in 

youth that could inform potential targets for novel and 

improved interventions.

Exposure to adverse experiences in early childhood 

significantly increases the risk of mental illnesses arising 

in adulthood and can also disrupt the formation of typical 

reward behaviors. Recently, NIMH-supported 

researchers discovered a novel connection between the 

basolateral amygdala–a brain region critical for forming 

associations between experiences and outcomes–and 

the nucleus accumbens, which is important for 

processing rewarding experiences. The researchers 

found that selectively activating this connection caused 

impairments in reward behavior, mimicking the effects of 

early-life stress. These findings are an important step 

toward better understanding the biological mechanisms 

of stress-related mental illnesses such as post-traumatic 

stress disorder, potentially identifying novel targets for 

prevention and treatment.

Brain mechanisms of stress and reward Transforming the digital ecosystem

Advancing learning health care: Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET)