Hope for Life
Using advanced methods in neurology and spirituality science, we are opening new paradigms in supporting the will to live and working toward suicide prevention.
The Current Crisis of Suicide
Growing Suicide Crisis
Suicide rates are soaring, with over 48,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2021, per the CDC. Veterans, LGBTQ+ youth, and rural communities are hit hardest due to isolation, discrimination, and stress. Social media and economic struggles worsen feelings of hopelessness, especially for young people, pointing to a need to understand how the brain processes despair.
Mental Health Gaps
Most people with mental health issues—over 60%, says the National Alliance on Mental Illness—get no help due to stigma, high costs, or lack of services. Hotlines like 988 and telehealth help some, but they don’t address the deeper brain and emotional causes of suicidal thoughts, leaving room for new solutions.
Neurospiritual Solutions
Combining brain science and spirituality could transform suicide prevention. Neurology can show how hope is sparked in the brain, while spiritual practices can help build hope and resilience. We believe that research which blends these fields will create new treatments to heal minds and save lives.
Hope sustains the will to live.
Because hope sustains the will to live, we’re launching first-of-its-kind, cutting-edge research to better characterize and support the experience of hope, both neurologically and spiritually.
Our team is the world's expert laboratory for integrating neurology and spirituality.
Our goals?
1) Pioneer noninvasive brain stimulation targets that ignite hope’s neural pathways.
2) Develop evidence-based spiritual interventions to nurture it.
This transformative work could redefine mental health, resilience, and human flourishing. Your donation will fuel this revolutionary quest to unlock hope’s potential, offering light to those in darkness, and building a more hopeful future.
We are seeking $2.5 million to transform The neurological and spiritual understandings of hope
Spirituality & Hope
92% of adults in the United States have spiritual beliefs. Spiritual beliefs often foster hope in tandem with providing a sense of purpose and connection to something greater. This can inspire resilience and optimism in facing life's challenges.
By rigorously exploring spiritual dimensions of hope scientifically, our research aims to offer credible, relatable findings that inform the quest for authentic, self-determined spiritual beliefs.
The Neuroscience of Hope
Our team, led by Dr. Michael Ferguson, PhD, has an exceptional track record. Dr. Ferguson's work has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Biological Psychiatry, and Nature Communications.
Convergent causal brain mapping as a tool for therapeutic targeting
Our laboratory is affiliated with Harvard Medical School's teaching hospitals. Because of this, we have special access to rare patient data. This includes patient brain data from:
1) non-invasive brain stimulation,
2) deep brain surgical stimulation, and
3) brain injury outcomes.
What this means is that we can do more than just image brain correlations of hope: our lab can map the brain circuits that cause changes in how people experience hope and hopelessness. Once we understand this, we can target these brain circuits for therapeutic modulation...literally sparking hope through medical science.
Your gift can HELP US Spark hope.
Why we need philanthropic support.
No one else is integrating neurology and spirituality like our lab group. However, traditional funding mechanisms for scientific research like the National Institutes of Health do not prioritize integrating spirituality and medical science. This is why your donation matters. We rely on philanthropic support to do this work. All donations to the Spiritual Therapeutics Hope for Life project are tax deductible.
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