IRS Approves LMI Public Charity Status 501(c)3
Loving Mind Institute, Inc. announces IRS approval as 501(c)3 public charity. This is an essential step empowering LMI to facilitate its mission to serve the public in the fight against mental illness and addiction. Donations to LMI are now tax-deductible. As a public charity LMI can receive support from a broad range of resources, including individual donations, private foundations, other public charities, government, and corporations. “This is an important milestone for our organization,” says Marion J. Riggs, Ph.D., Founder of LMI, “so many people are affected by these illnesses that are often associated with stigma and shame. It is critical that we improve our biological understanding of these diseases and develop new treatments and therapies.” For neuropsychiatric disorders, only, about 50% of patients are helped with existing approaches in pharmacology and counseling. For addiction, the numbers are just as bleak and overdose death rates continue to rise each year. Public support for increasing biomedical research funding in mental health is essential to meet our society’s growing epidemic. Revolutionary approaches in patient-derived neuronal models provide promise to capture the cellular basis of these disorders in cell-type relevant systems. For example, in a recent publication from the lab of psychiatrist Dr. Roy Perlis at Massachusetts General Hospital, patient-specific models of microglia-mediated engulfment of synapses were developed for investigating synaptic pruning, a key biological process associated with schizophrenia. Human, patient-derived cell-type specific, models that are disease-relevant with genetic background are becoming an essential tool for biomedical discovery and translational medicine in mental health.
About the Loving Mind Institute
The Loving Mind Institute (LMI), Inc. is a national non-profit organization dedicated to advancing biomedical research and scientific initiatives in mental illness and addiction. Mental illness and addiction are devastating to patients, friends, family, and to society as a whole. The numbers are staggering. 1 in 6 American adults (44.7 million) live with a form mental illness from mild to severe, and 10.4 million suffer from a severe form of mental illness. In 2014, approximately 21.5 million people aged 12 and older had a substance use disorder in the past year. To address this public health crisis, LMI coordinates scientific and educational campaigns aimed at improving medical and therapeutic outcomes for affected populations. Towards this aim, LMI will fund biomedical research and other targeted scientific initiatives that fundamentally improve our knowledge and treatment of these conditions. As part of our scientific initiatives outreach, LMI utilizes print, social media, and digital tools to translate scientific progress and treatment information to the community.
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