Washington, D.C. — The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is launching a series of specialized mental health centers designed to improve patient function and clinical understanding of mental illness.
The centers, called “mental illness research, education and clinical centers,” or MIRECCs, are modeled after VA’s geriatric research, education and clinical centers (GRECCs). For more than two decades, GRECCs have married scientific discovery with state-of-the-art clinical care.
VA plans call for a total of five MIRECCs. Two are gearing up for immediate operation, and three more are scheduled to open by October 1999. The first MIRECC is a program of the VA medical centers of the VA Health-Care Network of Southern California and Nevada, one of 22 medical geographic divisions of VA, and the second is a collaboration of several VA medical centers in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The California/Nevada project will study how clinical and community treatment of chronic psychoses improves patients’ “life function,” such daily activities as shopping, getting an education, or holding a job. For the second MIRECC, a consortium of clinicians and researchers from VA medical centers in West Haven, Conn., Northampton, Mass., and Bedford, Mass., will focus on health service delivery issues and the biophysical causes of mental health disorders in combination with addiction problems.
Of the two additional MIRECCs scheduled for fiscal 1998 funding, one will involve facilities in the VA Northwest Network. The Portland-headquartered MIRECC will study genetics and molecular biology, psychopharmacology and health services in post-traumatic stress disorders and schizophrenia. The fourth MIRECC location will be chosen after a scientific review of applications expected to be solicited later this year, and the fifth center is planned for fiscal 1999.
All sites are selected through a competitive peer-review process involving VA and other government and private-sector mental health professionals.
Reporters and media outlets with questions or comments should contact the Office of Media Relations at vapublicaffairs@va.gov
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