Daniel Hand High School alum and current UConn School of Medicine student Christine Donat is partway through a coast-to-coast bicycle trip to raise funds for Mental Health Connecticut, Inc. She’s shown here during a training ride in Farmington in April. (Photo courtesy of Jason Simms )

The weather was rainy on the last day of June, and the slick Montana road had barely any shoulder. Second-year med student and Madison native Christine Donat was about two weeks into a cross-country journey with a handful of other UConn medical and dental students to raise money for mental health. Her bicycle had been giving her trouble on the way to Glacier National Park, and she slipped and fell.

A woman driving behind the group pulled over to help. She happened to be a professional traffic controller, so she did her thing while Christine and the group collected themselves on the side of the road. Then the woman drove them to a bicycle repair shop.

“That’s just one example of the kindness that we’ve received during the trip,” Christine said in a phone call from Minneapolis, where she was taking a break. “People always want to help you.”

When the cyclists finally made it to the national park, a double rainbow welcomed them.

Over roughly two months, as part of the 13th UConn Coast to Coast Bike Trip, the students are trying to raise $20,000 for Mental Health Connecticut, Inc., in West Hartford, which is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year and is an affiliate of the nonprofit organization Mental Health America.

Christine is riding with two other medical students. The group of eight (10 started but two dropped out) split into three smaller groups to make the trip more manageable.

“You’re always stopping for something, so we would never get home,” she explains.

Only one of the students has seriously biked before.

“We think we’re more of adventurers than athletes,” Christine says with a chuckle, “so we’re taking it easy and just making sure we get there in one piece, honestly. I think anyone can do it if they put their minds to it and just listen to their body and mind.”

The body and mind connection is what Christine and her fellow students on the trip hope to highlight.

“We wanted to have a local impact near our medical school, but we also wanted to have a national impact and choose a charity that had nationwide significance,” Christine says. “We knew that Mental Health Connecticut (MHC) is a branch of Mental Health America, and they help people across the country.”

“We are honored to be chosen as the beneficiary of this year’s coast to coast ride,” said Suzi Craig, senior director of strategic partnerships and policy at MHC, in an email. “These students are amazing. They are committed to making mental health a priority in their profession.”

MHC helps people achieve long-term wellness and independence through housing, recovery support, advocacy, employment and education programs, and more, Craig says.

“The UConn students’ fundraising efforts will support our prevention and wellness programs such as peer support, Mental Health First Aid, gardening, art, writing, and more,” she wrote.

The American Medical School Association stated in 2017 that stress and depression are common in students, but two times more common in medical students. For Christine and the seven others biking from Seattle to New Haven, mental health is not only a hot topic for their classmates, but also for their future patients.

“Mental health is just as important as physical health,” says Christine. “It can play a huge part in your overall life quality. Our job is to make your life quality the best that it possibly can be and keep you healthy, both mentally and physically.

“It’s a very global issue but also close to home,” she adds. “Medical and dental students have very high rates of suicide and mental illness, and we thought it was something that really needed to have attention called to it. We wanted to be advocates for changing the stigma associated with mental health and also be able to have that for our future patients when we’re practicing.”

The idea of becoming a doctor dawned on Christine when she was a student at Daniel Hand High School. She loved science, so a teacher told her the courses she should take to eventually study medicine. She graduated in 2013 and was accepted to study premed at UConn. She says she hopes to practice internal medicine when she graduates from the UConn School of Medicine in Farmington in three years.

“It seems like a really rewarding profession,” Christine says. “The further and further I got into the classes, the more I realized it was truly for me and it’s what I wanted to do. And it got to a point where I couldn’t envision myself doing anything else.”

For now, she’s focused on the ride, which began after the group flew to Seattle, reassembled their bikes, and dipped their tires in the Pacific Ocean.

“We made it through the toughest part, which was certainly the Rocky Mountains,” she says. “Now it’s a little bit more mentally challenging with the plains and prairies, but we’ve been able to keep each other’s spirits up for the most part and stay dedicated to our goal of making it across and making the most of it.”

This is Christine’s first time visiting these states.

“It’s absolutely breathtaking,” she says. “We hadn’t seen a city between Seattle and Minneapolis. It’s been towns of 100, towns of 250. There’s sweeping plains and big green mountains and deep blue lakes, and it’s really incredible because you’re just so immersed in it the whole way. I wouldn’t trade it.”

“One of (MHC’s) favorite sayings is an African proverb: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,’” Craig noted. “We are grateful that people are coming together to make mental health a priority—working together is the only way we can ensure that our friends and neighbors in Connecticut will get what they need to prevent illness and achieve long-term wellness.”

To follow the UConn Coast to Coast Bike Trip and see more photos, read the blog at uconnc2c.blogspot.com. A fundraising page can be found at mhconn.networkforgood.com/projects/. Learn more about Mental Health Connecticut at www.mhconn.org.