We of the International Mental Health Research Organization are people whose lives have been touched by brain disease, either in our families or in ourselves. Because of this circumstance, we share a lifelong passion: to alleviate the suffering of people with brain disease, and to work to find cures. We began our campaign to reduce stigma and support mental health research in 1995; since then the phenomenal generosity of contributors around the world has enabled us to raise over $94 million for the cause! It's been a long road, but the best is yet to come. Through proactive allocation of research grants and cooperation with the government, we provide a framework for your generosity to build on. With your support we can find cures for brain diseases within our lifetimes.
Proactively Encouraging Successful Research
Your donation to IMHRO will fund the best mental health research we can seek out. With the advice of a Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) comprised of nine of the world's top neuroscientists, we invite programs to apply for a grant in the areas of schizophrenia, depression and bipolar research we determine to be most likely to spark fruitful discoveries. Then, the SAB helps us choose the most promising programs to fund. As they work, the young scientists who receive our grants submit regular progress reports, and we hold them accountable for research quality and progress toward their goals. And, when they make discoveries, these scientists share their results throughout the research community to speed progress at large. To date, IMHRO-funded scientists have made breakthroughs that have helped thousands of patients around the world.
Achieving Significant, Compounded Results through Public-Private Cooperation
In fact, the strides these scientists have made have been so significant that groups such as the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) have given them follow-on grants to expand their research, totaling $49 million to date. These grants have more than doubled the money given to these projects by donors through IMHRO. Through this cooperation between the private and public sectors, our "venture philanthropy" fundraising model continues to multiply research funding--and speed the search for cures. Some examples are:
$3.7 million given to the North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study under Dr. Ty Cannon has enabled them to develop predictive tests for psychosis conversion so powerful that in August 2008, NIMH gave them an additional $23 million to expand their studies.- $250,000 provided to Dr. Akira Sawa allowed him to make discoveries about the DISC1 and NRG1 genes so significant that NIMH awarded him an additional $6 million in 2008 to expand his research at Johns Hopkins.
- $250,000 given to Dr. Linda Brzustowicz at Rutgers enabled her to develop such a powerful technique for locating schizophrenia risk genes that she earned a $3.4 million grant from NIMH in 2007.
You can join the search for cures by supporting stellar scientists like these! Any contribution you make will go a long way.
Learn how you can support brain disease research through IMHRO
