My personal crusade will be entering its third year shortly and I'm wondering if it's time for me to hang up my hat and give up.

A bit of background:

Many years ago I was diagnosed with Pure-O variant type of OCD,

After making a good recovery and realising the horror that people go through with mental illness, I decided that my experiences had given me a vast amount of knowledge that if applied to a research project could help people less fortunate than me to make a good recovery.

So I wrote a PhD research proposal surrounding enhanced computerised therapy and submitted it to several universities; I had interviews to discuss my proposal and the academics I spoke with said that my idea and concepts could potentially revolutionise computerised mental health therapies.

So with the likes of Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Keele, Staffordshire behind me and the Psychological Services of the biggest mental health Foundation Trust in the country, I thought someone would be willing to at least contribute to funding me but no one has any money but seems to get pound signs in their eyes at the possibilities.

I'm very much willing to downgrade my life style and give up the senior job to do something I feel more fulfilling but I can't commit my time to carrying out the research without having money to keep me sheltered, clothed and fed.

So I'm in pickle not sure where to find funding and when to give up...

Hi matthewbennion, are you mid-way through your PhD, or yet to start?

It's rare for departments/supervisors to have money sitting around waiting for prospective project proposals. So don't take it as a reflection on your ideas that no-one has offered you funding yet, it's more that the funding system isn't well set up for your attempted route of entry.

Assuming you have yet to start your research, I see a number of options available to you.

1. Having identified the ideal supervisor/department, enquire as to whether they would be amenable to applying for funding for this piece of work. Standard studentships cannot often be applied for directly from funders by PhD students, but there are a range of ways of funding research.

2. Get a research assistant job as an intro to practical research, and to embed yourself within a relevant department. It would make the funding application process potentially more likely to be successful if you applied for PhD funding as an existing member of a department.

3. Consider whether you're approaching the right people. While mental health/psychology researchers may be the most interested in the end product, you might be best off carrying out that research in a bio-computing/health informatics department. An ideal set up might be to have a primary supervisor who was focussed on your methods, and a secondary supervisor who could give you the health expertise angle.

4. Be willing to be a little flexible with your ideas/proposals. It's rare for a PhD project to end up along exactly the same lines as the initial proposal, so it's good to get used to letting go a little, so as to adapt to the potential paths available to you.

Good luck