A Marist School alum is fighting for a mental health course to be required at the Metro Atlanta private school in the wake of a graduate’s tragic death on the University of Georgia campus in February.
UGA freshman Wyatt Banks, 19, died by suicide on Feb. 21 on campus. The tragedy rocked the college and the Marist community, and alum Jim Nash sees it as part of a larger crisis.
Nash, who graduated from Marist School in 2022, said he remembered as a student “when they read over the announcement the graduated students that had killed themselves.” When he saw the news on Feb. 21, Banks said his heart sank.
“It was one of those ‘oh no’ type of moments,” Nash said.
For Nash, it fits into the broader state of mental health in America. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, as of 2019, an estimated one in five adults experience mental illness every year, but men die by suicide at a rate four times higher than women.
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America said that while nearly one in 10 men experience depression or anxiety, less than half seek treatment. Nash said suicidal men have a “much higher threshold for reaching out than women” due to stigma and difficulty asking for help.
The data spurred Nash to do something. He didn’t want people to say “it is what it is” and accept it as reality.
“It’s not just enough to be aware; we need to be proactive on it,” Nash said.
So he drafted a Change.org petition calling for the creation of a mental health course at Marist the last trimester before graduation. He named it SLAM, or Success in Life After Marist: A course to “provide the closest time frame between the instruction of the information in the class and the student’s transition to college.”
In the petition, which Nash started to gain community support for, SLAM is outlined as a mandatory non-religious course taught by a licensed mental health expert. In his vision, the class…
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