Anxiety: A Giving Smarter Guide

Anxiety is a natural, adaptive emotion that promotes vigilance against potential threats. However, lasting or disproportionate anxiety becomes dysfunctional, potentially even impairing daily functioning. In psychiatry, anxiety disorders refers to conditions defined by such maladaptive anxiety.

Causes and symptoms of anxiety vary widely, informed by a mix of biological, psychological, social, and environmental factors. Even the biological factors alone include processes throughout the body, not just the brain. Further, anxiety varies across the lifespan; children, adolescents, and older adults are especially vulnerable.

Biomedical research into anxiety disorders and developing therapeutics is an active field. However, research is often conducted in disciplinary silos, which limits a holistic understanding of the complexity of anxiety. Preclinical research often occurs separately from clinical research, which slows the path toward developing a varied assortment of effective therapies. High-risk groups, who often bear the greatest disease burden, are also underrepresented in such research.

Treatment for anxiety remains suboptimal: existing therapies often fail to reach people who need them, and there is a need to better match individuals to the treatments most effective for them.

Both private and public funders support anxiety research, but public funding for mental health in the US is on the decline, and only a few dedicated private funders focus solely on anxiety research. Progress in anxiety research and treatment will require focused funding and coordinated efforts from both sectors.

To support scientific progress in anxiety, the Dauten Family Foundation has partnered with Milken Institute Strategic Philanthropy’s Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC). The SPARC team conducted an extensive review of scientific literature, analyzed public and private funding, and gathered insights from experts to produce this Giving Smarter Guide, which presents five areas where philanthropic investment is apt to make an impact in the anxiety field:

• Connecting preclinical and clinical research to advance more effective clinical treatments

• Researching how the brain and the rest of the body are connected in the setting of anxiety, to find new therapeutic targets and predict which treatments might be effective for which individuals

• Characterizing anxiety in diverse populations and researching risk and resilience across age groups

• Developing new therapies and improving access to existing ones

• Researching and developing personalized approaches to anxiety diagnosis and treatment