Foundation Funding and Psychiatric Research

Support for psychiatric research is limited to a relatively small number of
funding sources. Foundations-nonprofit entities that support a variety of social, medical, educational, and other
activities-are a potentially important source. The authors describe the role and structure of foundations, discuss
historical trends in foundation support for research in mental illness, and present the results of a study of the
extent to which foundations support mental health research. The results of this study confirm the paucity of
foundation support for mental health research but show important differences and similarities among the
foundations that support research in this field. (Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:830-835) Notwithstanding exciting
and substantial progress in both psychiatric research advances and public awareness and understanding of
mental illnesses, federal support for biomedical and behavioral research into these disorders has been
insufficient (1). Psychiatric research has been more uniformly dependent on federal funding than have other
fields of biomedical and behavioral research (2). An increasingly diversified approach to financing research into
mental illnesses must be adopted. The field must become cognizant of other avenues of research support,
looking to individual state departments of mental health, to increased collaboration with industry, and to public
and private philanthropies.