2023 Annual Report

FLOURISHING

People, Places & Planet

A LEGACY OF GIVING

The Mental Insight Foundation, based in Sonoma, California, is a family philanthropy started in 1996 by hotel executive Bill Kimpton, who was interested in alternative forms of healing for depression and other health challenges. Not long after its launch, the foundation got to know Professor Brian Berman, MD, who was an early leader in integrative health as a professor at the University of Maryland.

“There was a wonderful camaraderie and respect for the work he was doing,” said Virginia Hubbell, who served for many years as the foundation’s executive director.

When Professor Berman launched The Institute for Integrative Health, as the Nova Institute was then known, MIF was excited to support its focus on a more holistic approach to health. The foundation made its first grant in 2006 — major support for a pilot study of mindfulness meditation to promote well-being — and has been a consistent and valued supporter ever since. In recent years, MIF has been a key funder of Nova’s project to help primary care clinicians improve their own mental health and that of their patients.

“I am proud of Nova for its commitment to innovation in the mental health field and its stellar role as a convener of mavericks in the field. It brings together stakeholders across multiple disciplines to forge new pathways for individual and planetary health, healing, and thriving,” said Julie Diamond, current MIF executive director.

“Nova’s work is incredibly creative and forward thinking. That has been their primary identifying through-line: they were willing to go where other people were not willing,” said Hubbell. “Not only were their projects interesting and critically needed, there was always that aspect of tracking results and research and coming out on the other side of it with concrete information that was able to be looked at. The scientific part of it was very important to our board and was always well done.”

As the foundation sunsets at the end of 2024, the Nova Institute offers its deepest appreciation for MIF’s nearly two decades of vital support.

“The Mental Insight Foundation has been a generous and faithful supporter of our work at Nova,” Professor Berman said. “We are grateful that they share our commitment to rigorous research into new approaches to promote better health for people and communities. The MIF legacy as a leader in this work will endure.”

“Nova’s work is incredibly creative and forward thinking. That has been their primary identifying through-line: they were willing to go where other people were not willing. Not only were their projects interesting and critically needed, there was always that aspect of tracking results and research.”

— Virginia Hubbell

OUR SUPPORTERS

The Nova Institute is deeply grateful to the generous individuals, foundations, partners, and collaborators who made our work possible in 2023. We offer a special thanks to the following key supporters:

Anonymous
Brian and Sue Berman
Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Foundation
Bud and Laine Brainard
Leigh Cobb
Dave Dembert
Paul Dieppe
Garrison Institute

Jeff Greeson
David Jones
Richard Hammerschlag
Virginia Hubbell
inVIVO Planetary Health
Nancy McCabe
Mental Insight Foundation
Michele Mittelman

Osagie Obasogie
Ken Pelletier
Don Phillips
Greg and Mary Pinkard
Planetary Health Alliance
Vicki and Ron Simms
Linda Stone
Peter Succoso
University of Maryland, Baltimore

STATEMENT OF ACTIVITIES

Support and Other Revenue

Foundation/Charitable Contributions
Individual/Business Contributions
Other Income
Investments/Other

Total

$2,210,000
$63,800
$19,300
$428,200

$2,721,300

81%
2%
1%
16%

100%

Expenses

Programs
Development
Administration

Total

$2,371,200
$227,800
$270,000

$2,869,000

83%
8%
9%

100%

HELP US ACHIEVE A BIG VISION:

Better Health and Flourishing for Everyone, Everywhere

Nova’s vision is a world where health is valued as our most basic and essential asset and where people, places, and the planet flourish for the benefit of all. A world where health underlies all of society’s decisions and actions, where the many interconnected determinants of well-being are recognized, and where we place greater value on integration, creativity, and wisdom.

There is urgency to this work. Over the next five years, we plan to scale quickly to meet the mounting health challenges, find solutions, and take action. Building on our core strategies, we are growing our Scholars and Fellows, increasing the number of Media Fellows, and establishing new Collaborative Centers in areas of pressing need.

Building relationships with new supporters, foundations, partners, and collaborators will help us turn our big vision into a reality. Please join us and support our work.

Learn more and be a supporter.

Healing is facilitated through safety, persistence, and trust.

Persistence: “People did not simply progress through this sequence and experience healing. The healing journey was a recursive, back and forth process. They found helpers, used the skills/resources that those helpers provided, found other helpers that provided more resources and used those skills and resources. As this process continued, people experienced a gradual amelioration of their suffering. Although many despaired at times, all demonstrated the quality of persistence—they refused to give up.”
Safety & Trust: “To connect to helpers, it was essential for people to feel safe in those relationships and able to trust that the person would be a helper and not a barrier to healing. Persons whose wounds included a violation of trust were especially careful about testing the safety of new relationships.”

Resources support us as we heal. They include reframing, responsibility, and positivity. “Making connections enabled participants to acquire and refine resources and skills that were essential in their healing journey. People also brought their own personal strengths to the journey.”

Reframing: “A particularly important skill was the ability to reframe—that is to look at suffering through a different lens.” This does NOT mean minimizing trauma or pain, but rather it often means the opposite: understanding what happened was wrong, unfair, or uncontrollable and that we are not to blame for it.
Responsibility: While we don’t have control over what happened to us, we are the only ones who can help ourselves heal. “A third essential resource that people acquired or refined was the ability to take an appropriate amount of responsibility for their healing journeys. They participated actively in the process of healing. Once again, some participants already had developed this skill, and some acquired or refined it from their helpers.”
Positivity: “Another resource that people acquired or refined during their healing journey was choose to be positive—that is to have some optimism about their situation.” People have varying predispositions to positivity. In the study, positivity was important in helping people heal. This doesn’t mean a toxic positivity, but rather simply finding some good in life and feeling hopeful about our situations.

“Connection to others was an essential part of all the healing journeys.” Humans are social creatures, and even the most introverted of us need close relationships. Friends and family add meaning and value to life and help support us, in good times and bad.

When we experience relational trauma, relationships can feel scary, but reestablishing safety and trust in relationships is where the healing happens. (To be clear, we do not mean reestablishing safety and trust with abusers, but rather finding other healing relationships.)

“When safety and trust had been established, people were able to connect with helpers. The nature of the behaviours of helpers that fostered healing ranged from small acts of kindness to unconditional love.”

“Moving from being wounded, through suffering to healing, is possible. It is facilitated by developing safe, trusting relationships and by positive reframing that moves through the weight of responsibility to the ability to respond.”
“Relationships with health professionals were among these but were not necessarily any more important to the healing journey than other kinds of helpers, which included family members, friends, spirituality and their God, pets, support groups, administrators, case workers and supervisors.”

Healing probably means different things to different people, but one definition that emerged from the study is: “The re-establishment of a sense of integrity and wholeness.”

Healing was an emergent property that resulted from each individuals’ complex healing journey, a result of bridged connections between resources and relationships. “…they gradually found relief from suffering and began to exhibit emergent characteristics: a sense of hope, self-acceptance, and a desire to help others—the immediate precursors to healing.”

In varying degrees, “they were able to transcend their suffering and in some sense to flourish.”

Helping Others: We find meaning in helping others. “Understanding that suffering gives the strength and experience to help others in similar situations.”
Hope: We begin to have hope that we will not always feel this bad. A Crohn’s patient said, “I think gradually I realized that I was going to feel better. I did have days when I actually didn’t vomit, when I did feel better. And I think gradually I came to believe that maybe I could have a normal life again.”
Self-Acceptance: We see our inherent value and understand that we are not to blame for our suffering. A participant living with HIV said, “I’m really proud of myself. I think that now I still want to live. I don’t want to die, and I really love myself a lot. I have a lot of comfort in myself.”

Suffering is the ongoing pain from wounding.

There is some debate about whether people always experience suffering on the path to healing.

Wounding happens when we experience physical or emotional harm. It can stem from chronic illness or by physical or psychological trauma for which we do not have the tools to cope, or a combination of those factors.

“The degree and quality of suffering experienced by each individual is framed by contextual factors that include personal characteristics, timing of their initial or ongoing wounding in the developmental life cycle and prior and current relationships.”

Characteristics: How predisposed someone may be to wounding/how many tools and resources someone may have to deal with trauma/illness.

Lifestages: Developmental timing plays an important role in the impact of trauma — young children often do not have the same resources as older adults.

Relationships: Relationships can provide solace and support for those suffering, while lack of healthy relationships can prolong suffering.