Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders

February 15, 2018

Learning about approaches to funding mental health research at the International Alliance for Mental Health Funding.

The Open Innovation in Science (OIS) team at the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft hosted the International Alliance for Mental Health Funding conference in Vienna. LBG CEO Prof Claudia Linger welcomed participants and stressed the importance of supporting open innovation and genuine engagement with the public to identify novel and important research agendas. The OIS team presented their innovative approach to developing our research programs in mental health. Our PI, Jean, gave an overview of the Village project following the PIs for the other funded project DOT and partially funded CAP-C projects. These three projects were all developed during the OIS ‚Ideas Lab‘ held outside Vienna in May 2017 as a result of a crowdsourcing campaign ‚Tell Us‘ to find out what the public wanted researchers to investigate in relation to mental health. Raphaela Kaisler chaired a session with Austrian policy, government advisors, and psychiatry academics to discuss the possibilities of ‚open innovation‘ and what this means for research in Austria.

Leading clinical and academic experts presented on topical challenges facing the mental health community. Invited speakers included Prof Pat McGorry (Orygen Youth Mental Health, Australia), Prof George Patton (Murdoch Chlidren’s Research Institute, Australia), Prof Shekhar Saxena (WHO, Switzerland), Prof Helen Herrman (WPA, Australia), Moitreyee Sinha (Cities Rise, USA), and Graham Thornicroft (King’s College London, UK).

We visited the Karl Landsteiner University where the DOT project is based and had presentations from the PI Beate Shrank and the University Rector. During the second day we heard from funders who shared experiences – challenges and opportunties, in funding mental health programs.