Prospectus of Projects for Funding

Following up on our inaugural report publication, we have published our first prospectus of fundable projects — a curated portfolio of evolution-informed mental health programmes ready for donor support. To our knowledge, it is the first document of its kind: a specific, costed list of research, clinical, and training initiatives grounded in evolutionary thinking about mental health.

The prospectus at publication details nineteen programmes. Fifteen are project-focussed, targeting specific populations or disorders — ranging from postnatal depression and PTSD to adolescent self-harm, eating disorders, addiction, and the wider question of how to triage depression treatment in primary care. Four are person-focussed: student small grants, research visits, summer research placements, and fully-funded PhD and postdoctoral training, designed to seed and sustain the talent pipeline that will run and iterate on the field for decades to come. Each entry carries a cost estimate, a timeline running from first credible data to long-term outcome validation, and a short account of the translational outcomes it could deliver.

The prospectus is the operational companion to Before Evolution: The State of Mental Health, FEMH's inaugural report published earlier this year. Where the report sets out the case for an evolution-informed transformation of the mental health sciences, the prospectus is the concrete follow-on — a list of things to do, costed and ready to fund.