Wow what a year it is has been. It has certainly not been a year like any other, with a lot of mental health hardships on all of us, particularly within the OCD community.
Nevertheless, for Orchard OCD we have had a transformational year through our successful crowdfunding campaign, celebrities and OCD experts joining our informative and thought-provoking OCD webinars, and lots of new, hardworking volunteers who have joined our team.
In May we launched our first ever crowdfunding campaign with a big £50,000 target to raise over five weeks. This was for a study into seeing whether the drug psilocybin can be used to treat OCD.
With a lot of preparation and mentoring from Crowdfund 360, we launched on May 5th. We surpassed our target and raised £60,130 in five weeks! Here is the link to our crowdfunding campaign to watch our video and see how the campaign went.
This was truly a highlight of 2020 and really showed us the power of the OCD community and the need for a more effective OCD treatment.
During this campaign, we ran two webinars, hosted by Orchard OCD trustee and TV journalist Sean Fletcher. We had guests, such as drug expert Prof David Nutt and journalist Bryony Gordon, talk about a range of issues, from OCD and psilocybin, to anorexia, anxiety and much more. This was a great way to raise mental health awareness and share our crowdfunding campaign to a wider audience.
We partnered with the Made of Millions Foundation to host the webinars and continue to do so. We have had OCD expert Prof Naomi Fineberg and neuroscientist Prof Trevor Robbins as our guests. Watch our latest webinar with Prof Trevor Robbins here.
None of these things would be possible without our brilliant group of volunteers who have worked tirelessly on our crowdfunding campaign and have regular meetings advocating for OCD awareness and how Orchard’s work can go further.
We will be starting the psilocybin study next March – read more in our blog here.
We also have a brand-new study testing a medical device to treat OCD – read more in our blog here.
We would like to say a big thank you to our supporters. Here at Orchard we wish you a safe, healthy and happy holiday and see you in the New Year for more exciting OCD treatment updates, webinars and proposals for a new crowdfunding campaign!
If you want to join our volunteer group, have any ideas on how we can spread more OCD awareness and promote our work please email co-founder Nick, nick@orchardocd.org.
Stay safe everyone.
The Orchard OCD Team