Gift for mental health program personal to Schottenstein family

The new mental-health initiative at Ohio State University — the Jeffrey Schottenstein Program for Resilience — is deeply meaningful to its namesake.

The university announced Tuesday that the Jay & Jeanie Schottenstein Family Foundation (named after Jeffrey’s parents) has pledged $10.15 million to create the program.

It stems, Jeffrey said in an email interview, from the anxiety and depression he experienced as a teenager — problems that increased when he attended Ohio State as a freshman in 2003.

Back then, he wrote, there were no resources on campus to help him. And nobody talked about mental health issues.

“I put my name on this program because it has taken me a long time not to feel ashamed myself,” wrote Schottenstein, 36. “It’s intensely personal to me that we not whisper about mental health or treat people struggling with it like they are invisible or anonymous.

“More than anything, I want students to know they are not alone, and that dealing with a mental health challenge is not something to be ashamed of.”

The money will be used in a variety of ways: To fund a marketing campaign to fight against the stigma of mental-health issues, to pay for more therapists and peer counseling on campus, and to fund research into the brain and ways in which cognitive and emotional healing can occur.

And that healing underscores why it was important to Schottenstein that the word, “resilience” was in the program’s title.

“Resilience means being able to find your way back to your core self,” wrote Schottenstein, the founder and CEO of TACKMA, a Columbus menswear company. “It doesn’t mean learning to smile and whistle all the time and pretend you’re fine. It means understanding your feelings, your chemistry and your personal wiring and having the tools to know when those things are, A, out of whack, and, B, how to reset them.

“Sometimes we can do it ourselves. Sometimes we need help. But those skills are absolutely essential to living a healthy life.”

Schottenstein said initial discussions about a gift began in 2019. The COVID19 pandemic, he said, and the resulting new emphasis on addressing mental-health issues “reignited” the need to do something.

On Oct. 30 during the Ohio State-PennStatefootballgame, Jeffrey, Jay and Jeanie presented an oversized check to Dr. K. Luan Phan, chair of OSU’s department of psychiatry and behavioral health, who will lead the new program.