The Report Card: Progress Report or Final Grade?

IT IS NO coincidence that the appraisal¹ of the National Plan for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders² should be referred to as "a report card." As all of us recall, report cards are what we got in school to let us know how our performance stacked up against teacher and curriculum expectations. In this case, the curriculum designers were the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee (IOM) for the Study of

See also pages 715, 727, 729, and 732  Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders, chaired by James Leckman, MD, and Glen R. Elliot, MD, in consort with eminent committee members and task forces. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Bethesda, Md, which developed the national plan, is presumably getting the report card.By way of history, the NIMH had asked the IOM to study the current status of research on child and adolescent