My name is Alex. From the age of 20, I suffered with seasonal depressions. This gradually developed to hearing voices and delusional thoughts and at the age of 29 I was hospitalised for 3 months.

My mental health challenges have made my life incredibly difficult and I’m fighting to ensure that people young and old don’t have to go through what I have been through.

I have lobbied, campaigned and petitioned on this issue to no avail. I’m taking legal action as a last resort to hold the government funding body UK Research and Innovation to account.

We want to ensure it is compliant with the Equality Act and is delivering research funding that benefits those groups most marginalised and vulnerable to mental health challenges like young people and the poorer members of society. But I can’t do this alone. Please contribute now and share this page with your friends, family and on social media.

If we win, we believe that we will change the face of medical research funding in the UK forever, for the better, for everyone. Please donate now.

Case Background

After I experienced mental health challenges, I wanted to take action so I started Miricyl. Miricyl’s vision is for a world free from mental illness and the stigma attached. We aim to fund research and campaign for infants, children, young people and their families affected by mental illness.

But this case is about more than Miricyl. It’s about the epidemic of mental health in the UK and how government can best tackle it.

Research can change lives and has a tangible effect on services. So, as part of my work I investigated the UK government’s funding of mental health research and compared it to the impact of mental illness on society. The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Centre for Mental Health have reviewed our numbers and methodology.

We believe that it is conservative to say mental health gets half the funding it should do and that if this is not changed mental health researchers will lose £1.5bn of funding over the next 10 years.

Every year, the effect of not conducting this research will be the equivalent of closing all the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Units serving the City of Edinburgh and surrounding area, or the equivalent of the UK’s 5th largest city.

Legal action is our last resort.

We have instructed leading equality and human rights lawyers, Rowan Smith at Leigh Day and David Wolfe QC from Matrix Chambers to help fight our case in the courts.

Government funder UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has a duty under the Equality Act to have due regard for the impact its policies have on those groups the Equality Act protects: including not only a disability like mental illness but also amongst others: age, sex, race and sexual orientation.

UKRI does not know what it funds by any of the above groups and our research suggests that as well as spending half what it should do on mental health they fund few if any projects for particularly vulnerable groups such as students, BME women and the LGBTQ+ community.

How much are we raising and why? 

Miricyl is raising £2,000 for the first stage of the legal process but we will then need to go on and raise further funds to cover the ongoing cost of this challenge.

After this point, we will be raising money mainly to cover our liability for UKRI’s legal fees if we were to lose. Our legal team are highly motivated and are working predominantly on a discounted conditional fee basis.

You can make a real difference by contributing and sharing this page now.

Thanks for your support.