Dr. Michael Mithoefer received the disappointing news that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has rejected our grant application seeking $125,000 over two years for the development of a treatment manual for the use of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). MAPS’ grant application was not scored (it was considered in the bottom half of all applications). This rejection isn’t really surprising since the last time NIMH gave a grant for anything to do with psychedelic psychotherapy was over 30 years ago, with all NIMH intramural psychedelic psychotherapy research stopping in 1967. MAPS invested $2,768 in the NIMH grant application, but the money is not wasted. We have gained a better understanding of what it will take to complete the treatment manual that we have already begun to develop and we now can say that we have indeed tried to obtain funding from NIMH. Maybe once we complete the initial pilot study, we can submit the results to NIMH and try again to obtain support. It has been reported that in 2004, the Veterans Affairs Department (VA) spent $4.3 billion on PTSD disability payments! In 2006, the VA requested $2.2 billion for mental health services. Once we have completed our initial pilot study, we may have a better chance of obtaining some federal funding for MDMA/PTSD research.
