Ohio State Coach Donates To Mental Health Research
Represents Philanthrophy Trend In Higher Education & High Schools To Support Mental Health
Ohio State University football coach Ryan Day and his wife Nina are donating $1 million to fund research and services that promote mental health at the University’s Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.
This donation is personal. Day’s father died of suicide when he was a young boy and Nina Day has struggled with anxiety in her life. At a press conference in early August, both expressed the importance of preventive measures and destigmatizing mental health especially during college years.
The Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund will be used to support the school’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and will help with research on identifying risk factors of illness after stress, including post-traumatic stress. The Day’s described the effort in football terms - calling the initiative as more of an “offensive game” that focuses on what a majority of people do to manage their stress well, instead of focusing on the negative.
This effort by OSU as well as Day’s is rippling through both colleges and high schools with more funding for programs and resources to proactively support students in an effort to study the cause and effect of stressful events.
Like colleges, high schools are trying to scramble for resources, funding and implement programs that can work within the existing school structure.
In Boston, the Bridge for Resilient Youth in Transition Program helps students return to school after extended mental health-related absences. High school students spend one class period a day in the program’s dedicated classroom to get emotional and psychological support as well as assistance catching up on any schoolwork missed. The program itself is expanding as 137 schools in Massachusetts now use the program and pilots are starting to roll out in Rhode Island, New York and New Hampshire. Partnerships are also in the works with school districts in Washington state and Oregon.
Schools nationally are struggling - one of our polls found that 80% of schools say they are under-resourced for psych services. “Many of the kids in the Boston program are coming out of a psychiatric hospitalization,” according to Ashley Sitkin, BRYT clinician/program leader at Rindge & Latin; an ethnically diverse school.
“Some of the kids haven’t been hospitalized but they’ve missed a lot of school because they’ve gotten stuck in this avoidance cycle, which is really common for kids who struggle with anxiety and depression,” said Sitkin in a report.
By sophomore year, many students have been out of school for 2 years, therapy and medication haven’t worked and most have had multiple psych hospital visits. But these more integrated schools are offering solutions that stop the cycle.