Charmaine McGill’s family has distributed more than $100 million from the Effie and Wofford Cain Foundation over 70 years, but nothing has been as meaningful for her as its latest focus: research into how psychedelics can treat mental health conditions such as depression, PTSD, and addiction.
The cause is personal for McGill. She lost both of her sons — first Frank, in 2009, to suicide, and then Parker, in 2018, to a fentanyl overdose. McGill herself took antidepressants for years until she discovered psychedelic therapies.
The Cain Foundation was established by a great uncle, Texas oilman Wofford Cain, and was led by her father, Frank Denius, for more than six decades. In 2024, McGill and her husband, Gordon McGill, made a $12.5 million naming gift through the foundation to establish the Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy. Charmaine McGill says the center, which is housed at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, will help build scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of psychedelics. She says those therapies have helped her — and could have saved her sons.
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