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Couples Sandy and Joan Weill announced a $185 million donation to the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) for brain research hoping to remove the shame felt by the mental illness patients. They want to change the way the mental illness, sleep disorders and migraines are being approached by putting them together in one umbrella of neurosciences.

Using the donation, which is the biggest donation in the history of this field, will be used to create Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the UCSF. It will consolidate different departments in the university and will add 45 new basic research laboratories that focus on a wide variety of brain-related conditions, as reported by the Washington Post.

According to the Weills, their donation is "deeply personal" as Sandy's mother suffered with Alzheimer's disease for the last 10 years of her life. His father, on the other hand, has severe depression, while one of his best friends committed suicide. Meanwhile, Joan's mother died at the age of 100 with a sharp mind.

"There have been a lot of discoveries in cancer and cardiovascular disease that have allowed people's bodies to live longer, but there has not been nearly as much in the neurosciences," said Sandy, the former Citigroup chief executive officer who built the company into one of the world's largest financial services companies. "My wife comes from a family with very good brains. Therefore I need this developmental work so I can keep up with her," he joked.

The UCSF Weill Innovation Fund will give support for the high-risk, high-reward research projects to find new treatments for psychiatric and neurological conditions by giving the UCSF neuroscientists the freedom and flexibility to pursue their most innovative research goals, according to the UCSF's website.

The donation will also offer a financial support to PhD students in the Neuroscience Graduate Program that will allow the UCSF to pursue its success in getting the best young scientists to its doctoral program. The building will also be a great tool that can be used to recruit top scientist to the university. Funding will also be provided by the Weill Scholars program for the recruitment of the most promising junior faculty.

"We are extremely grateful to the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sandy, not only for the funding they've provided, but because they have challenged us to think big," UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood said.

The Weills are among the world's wealthiest individuals and families who are the original signatories of The Giving Pledge in 2010.