Cure Alliance for Mental Illness is a new social activist network for mental illness research. Our mission is to unite the energies of patients, families, clinicians, scientists, and mental illness organizations to:* Educate the public and policymakers about mental illnesses as brain disorders* Advocate for scientific research to understand mental illnesses* Work toward safe, effective treatments for those suffering from mental illnessesCure Alliance transforms perceptions about mental illness through education about the science of mental disorders. We advocate for scientific research in mental illness, which is funded below other disorders and diseases with similar public health burdens. We embrace the word cure as a simple and powerful way to claim parity with other medical disorders in the therapeutic research sphere and to represent our hope for all illnesses.The stigmas that haunt mental illness—that crazy people are dangerous, that people with depression or anxiety just need to pull themselves together—are deeply rooted and will not yield simply to positive media messages. Different from other advocacy groups, Cure Alliance advocates for research because the clearest way to eliminate stigma about mental illness, and to alleviate the suffering they cause, is to cure the illnesses.As the only advocacy organization focused exclusively on research on mental illness, Cure Alliance addresses a critical need in mental illness advocacy, bringing together this diverse community around a topic we all agree upon—that the current treatments are not adequate.