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Canada's leading champion of mental health will create a new national charity to raise research money for illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia – an effort to make funding and public awareness of the issue equal to cancer and heart disease.

The charity, tentatively called Mind and Brain Canada, will initially raise funds to develop programs to help hard-to-reach groups such as youth, who have some of the highest rates of mental health problems.

“This is the first real national push,” said former Liberal senator Michael Kirby, chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. “How do we keep mental health out of the shadows forever?”

Mr. Kirby said a prominent fundraising body similar to the Canadian Cancer Society or the Heart and Stroke Foundation is necessary to fight the persistent stigma surrounding mental illness and the lack of funds available to help the one in five Canadians who will struggle at some point in their lives with a mental-health problem.

The charity will not conduct its own research, Mr. Kirby said, but distribute funds, raised by a “national army of volunteers,” to researchers and non-profit organizations. It will operate independently of the commission and is expected to be launched by early 2009. Revenue Canada must still grant the plan non-profit status.

Canada is the only Group of Eight country without a mental-health strategy. Developing one by 2011 is the main objective of the commission, which received $110-million in the last budget to fund research.

But mental-health advocates say more money is needed to correct years of cuts. They point to a recent report that estimated mental illness costs Canada an estimated $23-billion each year in medical bills, disability and sick leaves. Another $28-billion was attributed to “a reduction in health-related quality of life,” according to the study by Carolyn Dewa of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

“Mental-health issues are huge, and we have very little research time spent on them,” said Phil Upshall, the executive director of the Mood Disorders Society of Canada and a part-time adviser to the commission.

A significant amount of the money for Canadian research comes from an American source, the National Institute for Mental Health, according to Mr. Upshall, and many grant proposals are turned down for lack of funds.

“The impact of mental health is as big, if not bigger, than cancer,” he said, pointing out that during its Relay for Life weekend, the Canadian Cancer Society brings in as much money as all of the mental-health charities raise in a year. “We do not have a powerful leading charity that can attract major donations to the issue. The need is overwhelming.”

At the same time, Mr. Upshall concedes there is “background noise” among some mental-health advocates who believe that rather than creating a new national non-profit, the effort should be spent on boosting the profile of existing groups, who could use additional funds to provide similar research grants.

“It's a shame to be competing,” said a representative of one of the non-profit groups, who did not want to be named or seen to be criticizing the overall work of the commission. “If the donors are out there, there should be a way to get their support to those groups.”

But Taylor Alexander, national CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association, said he was waiting to hear final details of the charity – how the money will be spent and who will be eligible to receive it. But he suggested that a fundraising body that then distributes research dollars to non-profit groups could benefit cash-strapped organizations.

“It is an intriguing idea,” he said. “Certainly there is a need in this sector for funding.”

Mr. Kirby, who will serve as the foundation's chair, said the advantage of the charity is that it will co-ordinate funding for mental health in general, rather than splitting up money by disease, and carry on its work beyond the timeline of the commission.

“The reality is we've got to get it done,” he said.