In memory of his sister, Linda, Joseph Rechter establishes an endowed fund for the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine to bolster innovative research into the causes and treatment of mental illness in young people.
While attending Whitfield School in St. Louis, Linda Rechter played varsity field hockey and soccer and was active in art and film. She served as a candy striper, volunteered at Grace Hill Settlement House, assisted with St. Louis’s Head Start program, and worked as a volunteer at Kibbutz Deganya Aleph in Israel’s Jordan Valley. Upon graduating from Whitfield, she attended the University of Denver. She was funny and smart, sensitive and good-hearted. She had family and friends who loved her dearly.
In November 1977, at age 25, Linda died by suicide. Her family was devastated.
“Linda was treated for depression even as a child. The world just seemed too much for her to handle, and the treatments she received were, for the most part, ineffective,” says her brother, Joseph Rechter. “After Linda’s death, I’m convinced for the rest of their lives, my parents thought about my sister every day.”
Rechter’s parents didn’t talk about Linda’s suicide; in the 1970s the stigma of mental illness was too great. But through the years Rechter continued thinking about his sister, the contributions she could have made to the world, and the profound impact her absence had on his family. Forty-five years after his sister’s passing, Rechter decided to honor Linda’s memory by supporting the research being conducted into child, adolescent and young adult mental illness by the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM). Eric Lenze, MD, heads the department.
“In discussions with Dr. Lenze I found that treatments haven’t advanced significantly since my sister was undergoing therapy,” says Rechter. “I wanted to support research into moving that science forward so other families didn’t have to experience what we did.”
The goal of Rechter’s $500,000 endowed fund is to accelerate innovative discoveries and interventions in child, adolescent and young adult mental illness. Research grants will be awarded annually to projects determined to have high potential for becoming fundamental game changers in the care of this group of patients.
“We currently are in a mental health crisis for young people. Rates of depression and clinically significant anxiety have increased dramatically within the past several years,” says Lenze. “There are theories as to why this is happening—social isolation brought on by the pandemic, social media pressures, the general divisiveness within our country—but determining the reasons for this uptick is important to our advancing our understanding of mental illness in this age group.”
A major barrier to this effort is lack of funding. Statistics show that suicide kills more in this age group than cancer, but cancer research receives 100 times more funding—enough dollars to support the pursuit of novel treatment ideas. The only major source of funding for suicide and mental health is the National Institutes of Health, and it requires preliminary data showing promising results before considering a research proposal. Producing that data requires seed money that is largely unavailable to researchers.
Through his endowment, Rechter aims to provide researchers with that initial funding. “I think of it as venture capital, seed venture capital, that will encourage researchers in the Department of Psychiatry to pursue their most creative ideas and, hopefully, lead to NIH support,” he says. “It is my intention to grow this endowment by securing additional contributions from interested individuals and organizations.”
Lenze notes the WUSM Department of Psychiatry is one of the largest in the country conducting cutting-edge research to find new treatments and ways to help people with mental illness. Approximately half of the department’s 60 researchers focus on child, adolescent and young adult mental health. He anticipates the endowment’s grants advancing research in four important areas:
- Developing new drugs with different mechanisms of action than those now available.
- Advancing the concept of precision medicine—determining what drugs and other therapies are most effective in individual patients, rather than providing a one-size-fits-all approach.
- Investigating how to identify mental illness before it develops or in its earliest stages in order to guide patients to a more positive pathway.
- Addressing the immediate need of overcoming the barriers to patients receiving care, which include missed diagnoses and a scarcity of medical professionals to provide mental-health care.
“I feel Joe is courageous in his effort to bring mental illness out of the darkness of its stigma,” says Lenze. “He doesn’t hesitate to address a topic most families don’t talk about. Unfortunately, for many people mental illness and suicide remain taboo subjects in our society.”
Rechter sees his endowment as a means of righting an imbalance that has continued for far too long. “Cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases—the mortality rates for all of these have come down dramatically over the years because research into their causes and treatment have been adequately funded,” he says. “The number of deaths by suicide has essentially remained at the same level for many years. My ultimate goal—and I know it’s ambitious—is to reach the point where the loss of a promising life like Linda’s never happens again.”