MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (9/10/2026) — A University of Minnesota Medical School research team has been awarded up to $6 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to develop more effective treatments for people with severe mental health issues, including thoughts of suicide.
The research will focus on a person’s ability to adjust thoughts, goals and actions to evolving environments, which psychologists call cognitive flexibility. People who struggle with cognitive flexibility tend to have greater difficulty adjusting to new or changing situations. Research suggests that lower cognitive flexibility contributes to the symptoms of many mental illnesses and to thoughts of suicide. Widely used interventions, such as psychoactive medications or talk therapy, do not fully restore or address cognitive flexibility.
“Rates of suicide in the United States have increased 28% since 2001, and there is a shortage of adequate tools to address this public health crisis,” said Michael Bronstein, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “If we can make people more mentally flexible, we might be able to help them solve problems in their lives and accomplish more in psychotherapy, ultimately improving their mood, their desire to live, and their overall wellbeing.”
The team will target cognitive flexibility via two complementary approaches: computerized cognitive training and neuromodulation using low-intensity focused ultrasound. By improving flexibility directly, the team believes their intervention may provide faster symptom relief for people with severe mental illness or thoughts of suicide. For people with the most severe symptoms, the team plans to combine both approaches. Together, the research team believes its suite of cognitive-flexibility-focused interventions will provide a more effective, rapid-acting treatment that can help keep people with thoughts of suicide safe.
“This is an exciting opportunity to build a truly neuroscience-informed treatment for suicidality,” said Alik Widge, MD, PhD, associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “If we can show that this type of focused, brain-based treatment works, it may finally reduce stigma and stimulate more research along these same lines for other mental health problems."
The research team plans to start enrolling individuals in this study this fall. Potential participants interested in learning more about this study can email [email protected].
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call or text 988 Lifeline.
This research was, in part, funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the United States Government.
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