Impact, Tractability & Neglectedness

Impact

How much impact on wellbeing and suffering reduction would this project have?

To compute this, we would need:

• The prevalence of these effects in various population
• The incidence of these effects in various populations
• The range of how long these effects last at various levels of intensity
• The range of impact of these effects on quality of life, education, work, relationships, careers, healthcare expenses, society and the like.

None of these data are currently available, which is part of the problem, as, without knowing these, it is difficult for people, teachers, therapists, and clinicians considering these practices and their related clinical interventions to make informed decisions of the actual risks, benefits, and alternatives, in accordance with the principles of contemporary medical ethics.

To understand the details of how the EPRC will answer these and related questions, click here to be taken to the white paper.

Tractability & Neglectedness

We sit at a truly remarkable moment in history where neuroimaging and other relevant measurement technologies are rapidly advancing. At the same time, widespread, diverse practices, such as various forms of meditation, prayer, psychedelic use, yoga, and the like are scaling rapidly. As these scale, so do reports in the mainstream popular press of meditation-induced effects good, bad, and outright weird. Yet, clinical medicine is lagging far behind in its appreciation of these effects and the opportunities to measure and study them that this historic time provides, with major textbooks of medicine and psychiatry, as well as DSM-5 and ICD-10/11 being essentially entirely lacking in useful information, diagnostic and billing codes about Emergent phenomena.

To address this obvious and glaring deficiency in scientific knowledge and its application in clinical practice, we have assembled a top-notch team of neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, emergency medicine physicians, biochemists, machine-learning experts, anthropologists, religious scholars, and other academics and interested persons with a wide range of the necessary talents, some of whom are at the top universities in the world. Nearly all have first-hand experience with at least some of the effects we are concerned with, so they are not only knowledgable but also deeply motivated.

We are confident that this remarkable convergence of circumstances will allow this top-tier team, if properly funded, to be able to successfully perform the studies we have proposed and translate these to sound clinical recommendations that will positively and globally impact medical and therapeutic education and healthcare delivery.

That they are properly funded is obviously one of the keys to the successful completion of our mission, so the EPRC provides the link between philanthropists and other donor organizations who believe in the vision and mission with the research and other relevant teams. If you are:

• a researcher or represent a research organization
• have a talent you believe would help us fulfill our mission
• a philanthropist or other funding institution interested in helping support our research teams

We would love to hear from you at [email protected].