“The Broad Institute today announced an unprecedented commitment of $650 million from philanthropist Ted Stanley aimed at galvanizing scientific research on psychiatric disorders and bringing new treatments based on molecular understanding to hundreds of millions of people around the world… Stanley’s passion for the cause began decades ago when his son, Jonathan, was stricken with severe bipolar disorder while in college. The first few years were difficult, but Jonathan overcame his illness with the help of lithium, a landmark drug first used to treat patients with mental illness in 1949. Now a successful attorney, Jonathan is also a founding board member of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming laws that affect persons with a mental illness, and an advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Although lithium helped give Jonathan a normal life, other patients who suffer from mental illness have not been as fortunate. Hoping to help these patients, in 1989 Ted and Vada Stanley founded the Stanley Medical Research Institute, aimed at finding treatments that would be as effective for others as lithium has been for their son.”
Source: Harvard Gazette
