How the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Supports Mental Health in Greece and Beyond

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Whether through intentional bias or benign neglect, there’s a large gulf between global funding for physical and mental health. Mental health issues receive only half a percent of overall philanthropic healthcare spending, the smallest piece of the pie. 

A cross-cutting issue with direct links to other big-picture goals like human rights and economic growth, mental health has moved into the spotlight in the past decade. The U.N. named it a critical part of achieving its 17 Social Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, and elevated it to a global development priority. 

But in many ways, sufferers still sit in the shadows. Mental health stigma is often isolating, making people feel like they are alone in their struggle and preventing them from seeking help. Numbers reveal a far different story. In all its forms, mental health problems impact more than a billion people around the world, 81% of whom live in low- and moderate-income countries—and that’s before the pressures of a global pandemic. Young people and people of color are particularly vulnerable. 

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), one of the world’s largest global private philanthropies, has made global health a priority since its founding a quarter-century ago, and considers mental health a “core element” of that work. SNF recently announced a five-year, $15 million commitment to get a youth mental health program off the ground in Greece, collaborating with two longtime partners, the Child Mind Institute (CMI) and the Greek Ministry of Health.

Here’s what you should know about the program’s goals, and how SNF’s mental health work fits within its larger global giving, including a $500-million-plus Health Initiative that aims to boost the quality and availability of healthcare for the Greek people. 

A global leader

Initially funded with 20% of an estimated $12 billion in proceeds from the estate of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, the foundation has awarded more than 5,000 grants totaling $3.3 billion since its founding in 1996. 

The organization is currently led by three co-presidents: Philip Niarchos and Spyros Niarchos, Stavros Niarchos’ first and second sons, and his great-nephew, Andreas Dracopoulos, who’s widely credited with leading the Health Initiative. The foundation has two homes, Athens and New York City, and an office in Monte Carlo—but funds globally.

Last year, SNF celebrated 25 years and the thousands of partnerships it’s created along the way. In the years before COVID, Arts & Culture and Health & Sports each garnered roughly 32% of overall funding. Education drew 21%. Social welfare programs comprised the balance. 

SNF typically places sporadic “big bets,” making landmark investments in places like schools and libraries. The largest to date was an $750 million commitment to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens, which includes a national library and opera, and Stavros Niarchos Park. 

Partnering with the Greek government

SNF has made access to quality healthcare a hallmark of its work for over a quarter-century, directing more than a half-billion dollars and 100 grants to meet its Health Initiative’s goals.

Work centers upon a public-private partnership with the Greek Ministry of Health to lift the quality of healthcare for all Greeks by upgrading and boosting the country’s health systems, as well as support for other “competent” local bodies and practitioners.

Current infrastructure projects include new-build general hospitals in Komotini and Sparta, and a pediatric hospital in Thessaloniki. Equipment procurement ranges from helicopters for air ambulance services to specialized PET/CT scans at four university hospitals. Educational initiatives include five-year training programs in trauma treatment and intensive care, another on preventing infection, and nursing scholarships. 

All initiatives, including the new mental health supports for adolescents and children, are slated to be “handed over” to the Greek state as they resolve. For example, if all proceeds as planned, the new hospital in Komotini will be delivered to the government and people of Greece in the later part of 2025. 

Prioritizing mental health

Mental health funding has been part of SNF’s portfolio for decades, either through outright targeted grants or as essential elements of grants with larger goals. 

Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos said the foundation believes “very strongly” that access and equity are central to matters of health. “Under our fragmented and incomplete mental health support systems, whether or not you receive the care you need depends on where you were born, your family situation, and the luck of a thousand other circumstances,” he told IP.

Other efforts to level the field in its home country include a five-year grant to the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Services (MHPSS) for refugees on Lesvos, and a grant to ActionAid Hellas to provide similar support to communities on the Greek Island of Evia as it recovers from last summer’s devastating fires.

Over time, work in the U.S. has included support for a Sandy Hook Promise Know the Signs program that teaches people to recognize the behaviors that trigger violence, and making mental health part of the supportive services it funds at Union Settlement in East Harlem.

Mental health interventions also run through the foundation’s COVID funding. Last year, SNF completed the $100 million global pandemic response it began in April 2020, directing seven rounds of funding at one goal: meeting urgent needs in local communities across five continents and 50 countries. 

Despite all of its devastating impacts, Dracopoulos believes that COVID may even have helped overcome old biases, as mental health issues touched “people’s everyday lives across the board, and all families to various degrees.” 

Mental health grants during the pandemic ranged from major support for the operation and expansion of 10306, a national psychological support helpline in Greece, to a grant supporting mental health programming for Greek refugees through Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). In the U.S., SNF supported the mental wellness of Alzheimer’s caregivers through CaringKind, and the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).

Support for mental health research 

Besides the Greek government, SNF’s other primary partner in mental health is the New York-based Child Mind Institute (CMI). The collaboration began upon the organization’s inception in 2010, and has continued with a steady stream of grants and initiatives. 

Niarchos’ grants to CMI have typically focused on research efforts that collect brain data linking biology to behavior through both its Scientific Research Council and Healthy Brain Network. Ultimately, outcomes are expected to improve the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders in children.

In 2019, SNF also supported the institute’s emotional wellness program, which works to help NYC public school students identify, process and manage their emotional states. The foundation’s next focus on youth continues the collaboration between the Greek Ministry of Heath and CMI. 

A public-private partnership serving youth

The foundation’s next focus on youth continues the collaboration between the Greek Ministry of Heath and CMI. The latest grant, made in April, supports a $15 million, public-private partnership to expand the capacity of mental health support in Greece and boost other important work already underway. 

The ambitious five-year project will apply expertise in child and adolescent mental health to program goals: increasing access, boosting resources and capacity, building a country-wide support and referral network, and improving literacy and awareness of issues. The collaboration is also expected to bring international best practices to bear for Greece and tap CMI’s expertise in telemedicine.

Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, founding president and medical director of the Child Mind Institute, said that while children are resilient, they’re also “uniquely vulnerable to traumatic stress and the behavioral and emotional impacts of isolation and disruption.” 

Koplewicz pointed to the hidden nature of a crisis that already exists: “Mental health effects of the pandemic seem to have focused on children and adolescents who were subclinical—who may have gone unidentified and untreated except for this remarkable crisis.” 

“The fact is that most young people with mental health disorders don’t ever get identified. And even when they do, the mental health system is not adequate to meet the needs of our children on a good day,” he said.

Peer funders 

While underfunded, global mental health does have significant backing from major players. Funders sharing SNF’s commitment to the issues include Wellcome, which made mental health one of the three urgent global challenges it’s targeting, along with infectious disease, and climate and health.

Wellcome has committed to spending the next three decades focusing on the prevention and treatment of mental health issues. Current tactics include supporting the mental health science community and encouraging collaborative efforts, and involving those with lived experience for meaningful impact. 

One of the world’s largest funders in the category, Wellcome reported $400 million in funding for mental health research in the 10 years leading up to 2019. Like SNF, it’s also prioritizing youth. At Davos that year, it announced an additional $268 million over five years to find the next generation of treatment for youth anxiety and depression. 

Another global funder, Open Society Foundations, considers mental health a matter of human rights. Support sits within a Health and Rights framework that directed $128.5 million in funding in 2020. A member of Moving Minds Alliance, OSF also values lived experience, and advocates against stigma and social exclusion. 

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also a leader in global mental health funding, and made mental health for all part of its Goalkeepers Accelerator work in 2019. Concrete progress includes building on a successful “Speak Your Mind” campaign in Sierra Leone aimed at changing the way the government defines and treats mental health. 

For SNF’s part, Andreas Dracopoulos hopes the foundation’s newest support for children’s mental health will take chance out of the mental wellness equation and create the basis of “long, happy, healthful lives.”

“We have the tools to do better, and we need to start implementing them, collaboratively and systematically, so that access to effective mental healthcare is not a lucky exception to the rule, but something every young person can expect.”