Objectives

Fondation FondaMental aims to respond to the scientific challenges posed by mental illness. In order to do so, it draws on the expertise of a national and international network of excellence composed of researchers and clinicians.

There is a chronic lack of funding for psychiatric research in France. Whereas mental illness affects one in every five citizens, a mere 2% of the biomedical research budget is allocated to scientific and therapeutic advances in this field.  

The consequences are dramatic for patients, their families and society.

Psychiatric disorders are the only illnesses that have not recorded a decrease in morbidity or mortality. Recent technological and scientific advances however provide better understanding of these illnesses and announce promising new avenues for treatment.

Mental illness is not a fatality and Fondation FondaMental has set itself three major tasks:

• To improve the understanding of mental illness : with the use of modern tools such as epidemiology, cognitive sciences, brain imaging and biology, understanding  brain mechanisms promises to be one of the great scientific adventures of the 21st century.

• To innovate in the field of mental health treatment : in order to improve the prognosis and quality of life of the patients, efforts must be made to discover new treatments such as psycho-social treatment, from cognitive remediation to psychoeducation, but also new biological pathway should lead to the discovery of new targets that will be best used if prescribed after a personalised work-up.

• To optimise public health decision-making tools in psychiatry : mental illness is one of the leading causes of disability and represents significant health care expenditure. Cost effectiveness aims to accompany political decisions concerning public health organization.