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Mental health research has just received a large influx of funding.
Ted Stanley is giving $650 million to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to find and treat the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses. His son has bipolar disorder.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
A billionaire businessman today is making the largest ever donation toward psychiatric research. Ted Stanley is giving $650 million to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The money will fund efforts to find and treat the genetic underpinnings of mental illness. From member station WBUR in Boston, Curt Nickisch reports Stanley's gift was motivated by a family experience.
CURT NICKISCH, BYLINE: Ted Stanley founded a company whose first product was a series of medals commemorating the biggest scientific achievement of its time - the moon landing in 1969. While his collectibles business grew, his son Jonathon Stanley grew up a normal Connecticut kid, until, at age 19, Jonathan came down with bipolar disorder with psychosis, which got worse over the next three years.
JONATHAN STANLEY: We'll call it the epiphany from my dad's standpoint at least. I went three days straight running through the streets of New York - no food, no water, no money, running from secret agents. And not surprisingly - after I stripped naked in a deli - ended up in a psychiatric facility.
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