PROVIDENCE – A $1 million donation will support new approaches to managing treatment-resistant depression and other mental health disorders in Butler Hospital's Brain Research and Interventional Neurotherapeutics Program.
The gift, donated anonymously by one of the program's patients, will give the psychiatric hospital "the flexibility to innovate and the momentum to move promising therapies forward more quickly," said Dr. Linda Carpenter, chief of the BRaIN Program's Mood Disorders Program.
"This gift empowers our team to explore bold ideas, expand access to advanced interventions, and improve outcomes for patients who often have very few remaining treatment options," she continued.
The donation will support brain stimulation-based treatments such as such as magnetic stimulation, which uses non-invasive, targeted electrical pulses to the brain; intranasal esketamine therapy, a nasal spray that supplements oral medication in treatment-resistant depression; and PRISM neurofeedback, a drug-free treatment that uses EEG and simulation technology to target depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Breakthroughs in psychiatric care often begin with bold ideas and the resources to explore them," said Mary Marron, president and chief operating officer of Butler Hospital. "This gift will help our clinicians and researchers continue developing the next generation of treatments for patients in need of advanced mental health care."
Butler has now received two seven-figure donations from patients in 2026, said Jeffrey Cabral, senior vice president and chief philanthropy officer at Care New England.
The gift "will help our clinicians and researchers to pursue promising ideas and bring new hope to patients and families facing difficult-to-treat psychiatric illness," Cabral said.
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.