Mental health research funding continues to evolve. To get a clearer picture of how it’s changing, we analysed openly available funding data using a new methodology, comparing trends from 2019–2023 to those from 2014–2018. Here’s what we found:
~20% increase in overall spend for mental health research
- This is consistent with trends across biomedical research more generally
- Funders outside of the US more than doubled their investments from ~$450M/year in 2014 to $900M/year in 2023
Funding to low- and middle-income countries has doubled
While funding to LMICs remains very low, it has more than doubled to ~$118M over the last 5 years. This is largely driven by funding to upper middle-income countries.
~18% increase for young people’s mental health research
Funding for child and adolescent mental health research has also increased, but, unfortunately at a slower pace than adult and elder mental health.
Similar distribution of spend across conditions
We found that the overall pattern of funding by disorder didn’t change greatly in the last 5 years.
Better alignment of research spend and burden of years of life lost
There was a >100% increase in spend for self-harm and suicide research, albeit from a very low baseline.
