Funding Priorities
The Foundation was established in 2024 with the charitable aim of funding research and education at the intersection of evolution and mental health.
Our Prospectus of ready-to-fund projects is now live
We have published a full prospectus of ready-to-fund projects with timelines, costs and expected impact.
The prospectus details twenty programmes. Sixteen 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. 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.
Every year
Approximately 3.7 billion dollars every year is spent on mental health research.
Evolution-informed
Approximately zero of that goes towards evolution-informed research.
Volunteer run
The Foundation is currently entirely volunteer run with minimal overheads.
Beyond the existing prospectus, many further high impact projects across the mental health sciences could be implemented.
Your support has the potential to catalyse a paradigm shift in how we understand and address mental health challenges globally.
In the context of global mental health spending — a $2.5 trillion-a-year problem — the sums required to move evolutionary psychiatry from a growing movement into an established discipline are extraordinarily small. Curriculum development, clinical piloting, public communication, the coordinating infrastructure of the Foundation itself: this is not the kind of work that needs billions. It needs catalytic, well-directed funding, applied to a field whose intellectual foundations are already in place, and ready to translate.
Larger philanthropic goals? As a founding patron of the field, you could play a pivotal role, felt for generations. If you’d like to start a discussion about how to create large and lasting impact, contact us at contact@femh.foundation.
Donate Now
- FEMH is Gift Aid certified, meaning eligible UK donations from UK taxpayers receive a 25% boost from the UK government.
- For significant donations, it is often possible to arrange for overseas donors to receive tax benefits via their national charitable donation system e.g. US donors will be able to make donations to a 501(c)(3). Please contact FEMH directly to arrange this.