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From NPR.

For over a decade, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Thomas Insel headed the National Institute

of Mental Health and directed billions of dollars into research on neuroscience and the

genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses.

Our efforts were largely to say, how can we understand mental disorders as brain disorders?

And how can we develop better tools for diagnosis and treatment?

But in the very first pages of his new book, Healing, our path for mental illness to mental

health, he admits that despite that research, Americans continue to struggle with mental

illnesses at increasingly high rates.

Insel says that's because the US mental health care system is broken.

Today on the show, Dr. Thomas Insel shares how he came to realize where America had failed

and his journey to find the answers to addressing the country's mental health crisis.

I'm Ritu Chatagy and you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.

Tom, I want to start with your time at the National Institute of Mental Health.

What were some of the scientific discoveries you oversaw during your time there?

There's a range of interesting projects.

We did several large clinical trials, which I must say I think overall, these were

trials for depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder.

The bottom line for most of those was that in the real world of care, our medical treatments

were not as good as we thought.

And I think that was an important insight that really charged us to say we've got to do

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