On October 10, World Mental Health Day reminds us of the critical need to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment of mental health conditions affecting tens of millions of Americans. While research is the vanguard of innovation, funding is lacking to support postdoctoral talent developing life-changing interventions. To achieve significant discoveries for optimal health outcomes, philanthropic support for this research is imperative.
Dr. Joshua Roffman’s journey illustrates why. After earning his doctorate, Dr. Roffman developed a groundbreaking hypothesis to prevent psychosis. Despite the far-reaching potential impact, traditional sources declined funding. Undeterred, Dr. Roffman found support from the U.K.’s MQ Mental Health Research, leading to a remarkable discovery: Increasing folic acid consumption during pregnancy enhances children’s brain development, potentially reducing the incidence of psychotic symptoms later in life. His research catalyzed worldwide public health policy change around folic acid fortification, demonstrating how targeted funding can lead to impact.
Mental health conditions cause staggering distress and economic costs
Nearly one-quarter of American adults (22.8%), or almost 60 million, were living with mental illness during the past year. Recent survey data indicate that mental health conditions are even more common: One-half (51%) of Americans “have experienced depression, anxiety or some other mental or emotional condition in the past 12 months,” according to a 2024 West Health and Gallup survey.
Over the course of their lives, nearly one-half (46%) of Americans “will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition”; one-half of these cases start by 14 years of age and three-fourths by 24. In 2023, 18% of adolescents, or 4.5 million, had past-year major depressive episodes and 12.3%, or 3.2 million, had past-year serious thoughts of suicide. Among children and adolescents, 10%, or 6.5 million, have ADHD, and from 2016 to 2020, they had “significant increases” in anxiety (7% to 9%) and depression (3% to 4%).
Chronic symptoms of mental health conditions result in extreme distress, disrupting people’s functioning and diminishing their quality of life. Painful and overwhelming thoughts, emotions and feelings significantly interfere with work, education, relationships, wellbeing and potential.
There are also serious drags on the nation’s economy. According to an April 2024 “first-of-its-kind study [that] integrates psychiatric scholarship with economic modeling to better understand the macroeconomic effects of mental illness,” mental health conditions cost the U.S. economy $282 billion each year — 30% more than previous estimates and “equivalent to the average economic recession.” The costs include income loss, treatment costs, lower consumption, decreased investments and less demanding job choices.
These widespread impacts create an urgent need for comprehensive research into the causes, diagnostic methods, preventive strategies and evidence-based treatments for mental health conditions. The current supply of research, however, falls significantly short of meeting this critical demand.
Mental health research budgets are insufficient
Inside Philanthropy has published columns and analyses revealing the relative lack of philanthropic funding for mental health in general and mental health research in particular. U.S. mental health research funding was only $2.6 billion in 2018 — a decrease from previous years — of which philanthropy accounted for just 1.3%, according to the latest available data from the International Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders. Moreover, half of Ph.D.s leave academic research within five years of graduation due to lack of funding, undercutting the potential for research breakthroughs.
As Inside Philanthropy has noted: “The lack of funding for research on mental health is a perennial issue. While more philanthropic support is going to research, these resources pale in comparison to amounts going for cancer, heart disease and other conditions that affect similar numbers of people.” These gaps have prompted some foundations and nonprofit organizations to step up. By expanding the scale and scope of investment in research, foundations can reduce the burden of mental health conditions for millions of Americans, as well as globally.
One promising strategy foundations and major donors can adopt is increasing their funding of small, agile nonprofit mental health research funding engines. These avenues have more flexibility to support scientists’ higher-risk, higher-return research that might not receive backing through traditional funding channels and that can lead to significant discoveries.
Nonprofits and funders demonstrate research potential
A number of foundations and major donors fund universities and hospitals for mental health and neuroscience research. Others fund the small number of independent nonprofit organizations providing awards to individual researchers to study mental health conditions, including Wellcome Trust’s generous gift to MQ, and funders supporting the MQ Foundation (MQF), established in the United States in 2018 to address the range of mental health conditions. Several foundations partner with Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and One Mind, while still others contribute to nonprofits that fund scientists to study specific conditions, such as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (an MQF partner).
Independent nonprofits granting awards directly to researchers’ rigorously vetted projects have the advantages of being entrepreneurial, lean and nimble multipliers, yielding extensive benefits for improved health outcomes for millions. For instance, through Fellow Awards, MQF and MQ fund and proliferate vital research by early career academic scientists (and other research programs) to detect, prevent and treat mental health conditions, with the potential for fast, transformative, real-world application. But this research often falls outside funders’ scope because it is deemed too new or untested. As MQ Fellow Roffman remarked, “The MQ fellowship was transformational. This study would have been too high-risk for conventional funding. MQ has enabled research that may result in measurable impact in prevention of mental illness in young people.”
Without research, it’s just guesswork
Scientific research is the foundation for early diagnosis, prevention and evidence-based treatment and underpins improvements in the health of all Americans, as we experienced recently with the development of, and enormous benefits from, COVID vaccines and treatments.
MQF and MQ have invested $37 million since 2013, resulting in an additional $58 million from government and private sources, yielding 32 new treatments. Innovations generated include a virtual reality intervention to accompany inpatient treatment for adolescents hospitalized for suicide-related incidents, mental health risk detection in school systems and novel approaches to anxiety treatment based on hormonal cycles. In addition to health benefits for countless individuals, research also drives health systems change through identifying evidence-based solutions that inform prevention and treatment services, influence policy reform and educate the public.
While the mental health research community has made significant progress, additional funding is needed for prevention, diagnosis and treatment advancements to improve outcomes. The tens of millions of Americans, and countless people globally, managing mental health conditions require it.
Ann Richman joined MQ Foundation as Executive Director in 2021, with over twenty years advancing major nonprofit institutions, previously as Director of Principal Gifts, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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