June 2015

MQ Statement on Research Funding: Internationalism From the outset, MQ has operated on the principle that the interests of mental health and the interests of our supporters can best be addressed by pursuing the most transformative research, wherever it is based around the world. Our goal is to support mental health research that is likely to make a tangible difference to people’s lives, whether through the development of better treatments or through improved understanding. To that end, MQ’s role is to channel donations from the public in any country towards research into insights and treatment, at the highest levels of quality and impact, wherever the research is conducted. We also wish to ensure that the name of the charity becomes an internationally recognised symbol of the highest level of research aspiration and accomplishment in the pursuit of this goal. To elaborate the considerations behind this approach:

• The most important research techniques and insights are globally relevant to mental illness.

• Studies of mental phenomena are all the more powerful if they take different environmental, cultural and social contexts into account, sometimes on a multinational scale.

• Some of the most valuable research is based on international collaborations, and these are

hindered if funders can only support research in one country.

• Our international approach sets us apart from most funders and funding schemes in mental health research and serves to make us better attuned to the way research is conducted today and in the near future.

• We want every researcher MQ supports to see himself or herself as part of a global

community of top scientists working at the frontier of cross-disciplinary mental health science. We know from the experience of the international gatherings of researchers we support that this creates a programme that can truly inspire the researchers we fund and their peers.

• We want the funding by MQ to be seen as a highly positive, prestigious achievement on a CV;

this can best happen in an internationally competitive funding context.

• We believe that this level of performance, and the prestige of the 'MQ' name that this will underpin, will in turn greatly inspire and reward donors.

Overall, MQ seeks to support and connect - not restrict - research internationally, across disciplines and treatment modalities to create timely opportunities to transform mental health research. MQ Board of Trustees