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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. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the priority areas the Foundation sees as having the most potential for impact.

As soon as possible, the Foundation will open up a small-grant call for researchers interested in doing work in these areas.

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Interventions and Treatment

  • Evolution-informed and strength-based psychotherapy

  • Evolutionary explanations and evolution-informed accommodations in classrooms

  • Effective workplace adjustments, accommodations and culture informed by evolutionary explanations

  • Identifying the technologies which improve or harm mental health

  • Subtyping cases of single 'disorders' by evolutionary principles (e.g. distinguishing depression caused by job loss from relationship loss) and measuring outcomes and effectiveness of various interventions

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Understanding and Explanation

  • Cross cultural work studying mental health and disorder in non-industrialised groups (e.g. in coordination with the MAPPING Mental Health network)

  • Investigating potential functions and strengths associated with diagnosable mental disorder

  • Investigating subclinical spectrums, familial traits, and the lives of individuals with tendencies towards mental disorder whilst not experiencing symptoms

  • Investigating ‘the other side’ – what is happening to people very low in anxiety, autistic traits, etc.

  • Multi-site work of cultures transitioning to industrialization to test ‘mismatch’ hypotheses, ideally establishing longitudinal sites

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Education

  • For Clinicians, Academics and Scientists; the most sound and up-to-date resources and promising research directions, with official accreditation

  • For Patients and Families; accessible, invigorating perspectives on mental health problems which connect them with our evolutionary past and dispel harmful narratives

  • For Educators and Employers; evolution-informed perspectives on human cognitive differences and negative emotional states, and suggestions as to how to best accommodate the ‘human animal’ into our weird modern world

  • For the General Public; a narrative around mental health that is both more scientifically sound and socially empowering

  • The development of AI Powered Educational Tools; chatbots mean we won’t need to train an entirely new generation of clinicians before millions of people can start accessing personalised evolution-informed insight into their mental health problems