our purpose

Empowering people with OCD to live beyond the limits of their disease.

Empowering…

The chronic lack of resources to fund meaningful research on the source and treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) has led to decades of “incrementalism” — piecemeal developments and discoveries (many of them adopted and repurposed from adjacent fields) that have only a limited impact on the lives of those who struggle daily with OCD.

While the range of available treatments, including behavior therapy, medications, and neural stimulation, can help some patients today, achieving the right balance that is affordable, accessible, enduring, and without negative side effects is rare — impossible, even — for far too many.

We’ve witnessed first-hand the crippling, life-eclipsing nature of treatment-resistant OCD on our patients and their families, and we want to do more than contribute to a status quo of “good enough” — we want to achieve breakthroughs by finding the genetic sources, mapping the malfunctioning neural pathways, and delivering a “functional” cure.

…people with OCD…

Obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are a normal part of life. We learn to activate and manage them as we develop into fully-functioning members of society — they help us in our quest to develop our bodies, grow our minds, and navigate our roles and relationships.

But while 98% of us are ultimately in control of our thoughts and behaviors, those who struggle with OCD are not. They live every moment under a cloud of fear and uncertainty, trapped in an ever-intensifying loop of intrusive thoughts that cannot be willed away, followed by repetitive behaviors that, in the guise of bringing relief, do more to reinforce and amplify their mental burden.

Without the right diagnosis and treatment, their lives grow smaller and their worlds more insular as their identities are hijacked by time-consuming rituals that lead to avoidance and withdrawal — from society, from friends, from families, from themselves. It is an immeasurable loss of human potential that is destroyed by the unforgiving, non-discriminating prison that is OCD. It is our goal to help those who are struggling — especially the 30-50% whose needs are not met by today’s treatments — break free.

…to live beyond the limits of their disease.

For far too long research on OCD has been neglected while adjacent research topics in mental health and neuroscience have leapt forward, primarily for one reason — funding. When funding to explore the underlying causes of a disease is limited, it creates a chain reaction of other limits — limited imagination, limited ambition, limited research, limited innovation, limited treatments, and, ultimately, limited lives.

By reducing the need to chronically search for funding, by assembling a virtual, multi-disciplinary team of forward-thinking clinicians and scientists, and by supporting those teams with critical infrastructure to facilitate real-time collaboration and sharing of key insights and data, we will unlock and accelerate the scientific and clinical breakthroughs that will lead to new, more powerful precision therapies that dramatically reduce the symptoms of OCD for the most severely affected, while also transforming the next generation of existing treatments.