Clinicians and researchers from the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine received a $20 million grant from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services on Jan. 19 to study risk and resilience factors in behavioral health. Credit: Courtesy of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Clinicians and researchers from the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and the College of Medicine received a $20 million grant from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services on Jan. 19 in the first statewide, multigenerational and comprehensive study to identify the root cause and treatments of the ongoing epidemic of declining mental health and drug overdosing in Ohio.
A study from the State of Ohio Adversity and Resilience, also known as SOAR, will investigate the biological, psychological and social factors that lead to epidemic mental health issues in collaboration with other Ohio universities.
On average, 19 people in Ohio alone die every day from drug overdoses and suicides, compared to a national average of 427 Americans per day — or about 9 people per day per state — according to the SOAR study. Dr. K. Luan Phan, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and principal investigator of the SOAR study, is studying the problem that has been exacerbated by COVID-19.
“What we want to do is identify the key risk factors that make you vulnerable,” Phan said. “But we also want to look at protective factors or resilience factors that make you strong.”
Dr. Scott Langenecker, vice chair of research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, said resilience is the ability to get back up again from adversity and learn skills.
The SOAR study takes a wide as well as a deep view of mental health, using two paralleled and interconnected studies to understand mental health and treat mental illness, Phan said.
The first study is a broad wellness survey to understand the mental health status of different populations across the state, with researchers collecting data from approximately 15,000 Ohioans across all 88 counties, Phan said.
“Those people have been selected based upon their zip code so that we can incorporate things like housing security, employment, health care access and minority status,” Langenecker said. “All of those things that we know are social determinants of health.”
The second study is a brain health study and focuses on the depth of mental health concerning family groups, with approximately 3,600 Ohioans representing 1,200 families, Phan said.
There are different ways to examine people’s brains in the family group through biological, psychological and social factors, Phan said.
For example, in the biological aspect, researchers collect data on brain function, genetic patterns and stress levels to understand people’s past traumas and adversities, Phan said. This helps researchers connect biology and psychology to the social atmosphere in the family structure.
Contextualizing mental health within families across multiple generations may also lead to new strategies to reduce the risk of mental illness and build resilience within the family environment, Phan said.
“Family units are an important part of mental health,” Langenecker said. “And we can understand at a very complex, comprehensive level how mental health is potentially experienced with this within the context of family or even protected within the context of the family.”
The two studies are interlinked, meaning participants in the first study will be invited to join the second study and vice versa, Phan said.
According to Phan, the first study started on Jan. 9 and the second started in December 2023.
“The idea is [that] by having five fixed sites and four or five mobile sites,” Langenecker said, “in the next 18 months, any person in Ohio will be less than 8 miles away from a data collection site.”
To support statewide data collection, several Ohio public universities and medical centers will join the research process, Phan said.
“Some people have better mental health, some people have weaker mental health and that is not something people should be ashamed of,” Langenecker said. “People should be able to access care and be able to develop good resilience habits in the hopes that they can live more meaningful lives.”
