Courage in Mental Health: A Letter from One Mind CEO Dr. Kathy Pike

Over the past several decades, we have witnessed a steady growth in public attention on mental health. Funding has grown. The number of researchers has grown. The volume of published findings has grown. And yet prevention and treatment have not advanced the way that attention, promotion, and investment should have produced.

I do not think this is because people are not working hard, or working well. I have watched brilliant scientists spend years on studies that were rigorous, well-designed, and successful by every standard the field uses to measure success, and still, when the work was done, we were no closer to fewer people developing the disorder, or living better with it.

I think this happens because we have quietly agreed on the wrong definition of success. In research, success usually means completing a study, reaching statistical significance, and publishing in a respected journal. Those are real accomplishments, and they build careers, as they should. But they are not the same thing as solving the problem the study set out to solve. A study can meet every one of those standards and still leave prevalence rates, and people’s lives, unchanged.

So I want to offer a different question, one I think our field should sit with. What if we measured success not only by what we publish, but by what actually declines? Fewer people developing a disorder in the first place. Fewer people relapsing after treatment. Fewer people waiting years for care that works. These are harder to measure, and slower to show up, and they do not always fit neatly into a five-year grant cycle. But they are the outcomes we actually care about.

This is not a call to abandon rigor. It is a call to ask, more often, whether the rigor is aimed at the right target. I want to see scientists rewarded for pursuing the harder, less certain question when it is the one most likely to matter, even if the path there does not guarantee a clean result. I am inspired by the founders willing to build the harder, less obvious company, the one that does not fit neatly into an existing category, because it is the one the field actually needs.

Philanthropists have a role here too, and I would argue a unique one. Philanthropic capital does not answer to the same short timelines or safe-bet incentives that shape so much of research funding. It can go where other funding cannot, toward the idea that is too early, too unproven, or too ambitious for a traditional grant. If philanthropists can stomach the risk of backing big, audacious ideas, they may be the ones best positioned to catalyze breakthroughs that move this field forward.

And courage is not only needed in the lab, the boardroom, or the funder’s office. It is needed in workplaces too. Employers are in a position to shape the mental health not only of their employees, but of their employees’ families too. Attending to mental health at work does not require significant spending. In many cases, it requires none at all. What it requires is the will to prioritize it, sustain that attention over time, and trust that the return, in retention, in performance, in the health of the people who make an organization run, will follow. What it costs is not money. It is the courage to play the long game for health.

This year, the theme of our One Mind Music Festival is Courage in Mental Health. We will be celebrating the courage of our scientists, who pursue the harder question. The courage of our founders, who build what the field does not yet have. The courage of our business leaders, who choose to play the long game. The courage of our Lived Experience Community, who tell the truth about what this field still gets wrong. And the courage of our partners, funders, and board, who make all of this possible.

To a future shaped by courage!

Best,

Kathleen M. Pike, PhD
CEO, One Mind