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The state of Ohio is embarking on a decade-long study to better understand the root causes of mental illness, substance use disorders, and suicide. 

The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services is providing a $20 million grant to fund the State of Ohio Action for the Resiliency (SOAR) study, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced during a press conference Friday. 

“Currently, there’s a lot that we don’t know and the SOAR study is a huge step forward in advancing our understanding of mental health and substance use disorders,” said Ohio State University President Ted Carter. “This study will provide key data that will shape the future of mental health across Ohio and beyond.”

“There’s nobody that is not affected by this,” Carter said. “There’s somebody that you know in your family, your community, your neighborhood that is affected by this.”

The study will go for at least a decade with the hope it will continue for decades to come and will look at generations of families from all across Ohio who are affected by mental illness and substance abuse disorders, DeWine said. Funding for the SOAR study comes from the state’s two-year operating budget. 

“We know mental illness and substance use disorders are preventable, treatable, and people can and do recover,” said Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Director LeeAnne Cornyn.

The SOAR study has two main projects — the SOAR Wellness Discovery Survey and the SOAR Brain Health Study. 

The wellness study will study as many as 15,000 people across Ohio’s 88 counties to learn how skills may help overcoming adversity. The brain health study will look at 3,600 Ohioan in families to help look at the biological, psychological, and social factors that help people handle adversity.

“There’s still an awful lot to know about mental health,” DeWine said. “And candidly, the research in this field has not been as robust as it has been in other areas. … It will give us a complete picture of each participant to uncover why, for example, two people in similar circumstances or with similar health have very, very different outcomes.”

Ohio State University will lead the study and is partnering with hospitals and universities around the state: Bowling Green State University, Central State University, Kent State University, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio University, the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, University of Toledo and Wright State University.

The SOAR study will be led by Dr. Luan Phan, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. 

“Our approach … is to identify the factors that can be modified to reduce risk and build resilience in the face of stress, trauma and adversity,” Phan said. “It’s important to identify what we don’t know — the root causes, the risks, the preventive factors of mental illness, to explain what, I feel, are fairly simple, but fundamental questions: who gets ill? Why did they get ill? How do they get ill? And when do they get ill?”

Researchers hope this study will do for mental health what the Framingham Heart Study has done for heart disease. 

The Framingham Heart Study was initiated by the United State Public Health Service in 1948 to investigate the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. It has enrolled more than 15,000 study participants.

“Ohio represents a microcosm of our country,” Phan said. “What we learn here can be disseminated and scaled broadly. Other states will not only copy and adopt what we have done, they will be compelled to do so.”

Suicide and opioid overdose deaths

Nineteen Ohioans die prematurely every day from unintentional overdose and suicide, Phan said. 

Opioid overdose deaths increased by more than 300% since 2010 in Ohio, said Dr. John Warner, CEO of Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Suicide deaths in Ohio increased 8% to 1,766 deaths from 2020 to 2021 — meaning five Ohioans die by suicide every day, according to Ohio Department of Health’s Suicide Demographics and Trends 2021 report. 

The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline received 8,793 calls from Ohio area codes from July 2022 to May 2023, according to the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

During that same time, there was an average of 2,014 texts and 2,007 chats per month to 988 from Ohio area codes.