Things Get Rolling
The take-off of psychopharmacology in the mental-hospital world began in the vast asylum system of New York State in the early 1950s. Henry Brill ordered the state system to introduce chlorpromazine in 1955, which led to the first decrease in the census of the state asylum system in peacetime. Sidney Merlis and Herman Denber implemented chlorpromazine in their hospitals and, with Brill, began a series of publications on the drugs and their efficacy. Pharmacologist and psychiatrist Joel Elkes established the first department of experimental psychiatry in the world in 1951 at the University of Birmingham in England. Finally, the chapter examiunes the historical heft of the National Institute of Mental Health, which in 1953 opened the “intramural” (in-house) research program where much of the research in psychopharmacology done in the United States has occurred.
