The Science Advanced. The Patients Did Not Get Better, with Dr. Thomas Insel

The science of mental health has advanced for decades. The outcomes barely moved. Dr. Thomas Insel ran the National Institute of Mental Health for 13 years and oversaw over $20 billion in research funding. He is the first to say it wasn't enough. In this episode of Neural Compass, Mark Jacobstein sits down with Dr. Insel for one of the most honest conversations about the state of American mental health care. From being fired from NIMH in the early nineties for studying "taboo" research on social attachment, to being recruited back as its director eight years later, Dr. Insel's career is a window into how the field thinks, resists, and eventually changes. They cover: — Why NIMH funded 109 new research grants this year, down from 900 in 2024, and what that means for the future of psychiatric science — Why the science advanced but patient outcomes didn't move, and who is responsible for that gap — The difference between studying a disease and actually changing the system that treats it — How Dr. Insel's latest ventures, Vana Health and Benchmark Health, are trying to do what research alone never could — Why AI for mental health will be what DNA was for cancer and why it's not about chatbots Dr. Thomas Insel is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and entrepreneur. He served as Director of the NIMH from 2002 to 2015, later joined Alphabet's Verily, and has since founded five companies focused on improving mental health outcomes. He is the author of Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health. Neural Compass is a podcast from Jimini Health, which builds clinically embedded AI for behavioural health.