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                                NAMI Montana would like to thank our Premier Sponsor:                                   

Mental Illness X Prize

NAMI Montana is asking our federal leaders to ask the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to develop a major prize for the first researchers to identify a verifiable biological screening tool for schizophenia and bipolar disorder.  The development of a biological screening tool for mental illness is critical to defeating these conditions and an X Prize is the perfect way to focus private researchers on that challenge.

Senator Tester just sent a letter to NIMH asking them to establish the prize and now we're asking Congressman Denny Rehberg to send a similar letter.  Can you call Congressman Rehberg at (202) 225-3211 or send him a message, http://rehberg.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=62&sectiontree=6,62, requesting that he ask NIMH to establish a Mental Illness X Prize?

We'd love to have any any Senators and Representatives as possible contact NIMH and ask them to develop this prize.  If you're not from Montana, you can find the contact information for your elected officials by going to this map and clicking on your state.

Your phone calls and messages are critical to helping us turn the tide against serious mental illnesses.  Thank you!

 

Why a Mental Illness X Prize?

Problem:

The quest to find a biological indicator for serious mental illnesses may not be the Holy Grail of mental illness research, but it is close.  The process for diagnosing serious mental illnesses is the first step in the treatment process for these debilitating illnesses, yet the diagnosis process itself is very primitive.  Instead of using concrete scientific tools to determine the illness affecting the inner working of the brain, psychiatrists and psychologists work off of behavioral questionnaires.  It is the equivalent of a doctor trying to determine whether a bone was broken before the invention of X-Rays.

This lack of a biological screening tool leads to misdiagnoses, improper prescribing, and a general mistrust of the mental illness treatment system.  The wobbly status of mental illness treatment system’s diagnostic foundation is staggering when one considers that the total direct and indirect costs of severe mental illnesses exceeds of $300 billion annually.[1]  Many of those costs are absorbed by the federal government through both spending on medical care and for disability payments.

Opportunity:

This major gap in medical knowledge creates the opportunity for NIMH to fund an X Prize to catalyze the development of this medical breakthrough, similar to the original X Prize that was used to stimulate the development of commercial space flight.[2]  This X Prize would be similar but more specific than the general medical diagnostic X Prize being developed by Qualcomm.[3]

The creation of a mental illness biomarker X Prize would really mean a lot to the one-in-five Montana families that are affected by serious mental illnesses.  If the effort is successful, it will dramatically improve the country’s mental illness treatment system and make the most out of the federal dollars that go to support that system.

Funding Source:

The funding for this prize should come out of NIMH’s existing research budget.  Ten to fifteen million dollars is not an unusually large grant award for the National Institute of Health.[4]