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On July 7 at exactly 7 p.m. — or “7/7 @ 7” as advertised on the event’s promotional materials — nearly 200 local runners clad in glow stick necklaces, light-up rings and neon unicorn horns descended on Techny Prairie Park in Northfield raring to race. 

And on the track, the number 7 was just as ubiquitous. Sevens peppered runners’ shirts, jerseys and sweatbands; one organizer even joked that “we almost considered changing the race distance from 5K to 7K.”

This abundance of 7’s was not a coincidence, but a tribute.

“Dylan wore the number 7 on his football jersey,” said Julia Bazianos, a junior at Glenbrook North High School. “Football meant so much to him, so we started using (the number) as a symbol.”

For many North Shore community members, Bazianos included, 7 is a number synonymous with Dylan Buckner, the 18-year-old Glenbrook North senior and football team quarterback who died by suicide in January 2021. 

Buckner passed just months before his graduation, following a battle with mental illness that was exacerbated by “the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic,” his parents wrote on the Dylan Buckner Foundation website.

Buckner was the inspiration behind the Friday Night Lights Glow Run fundraiser, a nod to Buckner’s love for football, organized by Bazianos and New Trier High School junior Lily Wolfe to “make a positive difference in mental health awareness and research,” according to the event’s webpage.

Dylan Buckner’s mother, Karen (center), stands with Glow Run organizers Lily Wolfe (left), of Wilmette, and Julia Bazianos, of Northbrook, on Friday, July 7.

The proceeds from the Glow Run — which welcomed more than 180 racers from Northbrook, Glenview, Wilmette, Winnetka and surrounding communities — benefit the Dylan Buckner Foundation, an organization founded by Buckner’s family in the months after his passing.

The Buckners’ aims are twofold: They hope to “encourage those grappling with mental health issues to seek help and support” while promoting “alternative treatments for mental health conditions” beyond “traditional pharmaceutical approaches,” according to the foundation’s website. To date, the family has funded around $60,000 in scholarships for local students, as well as supported two research grants  totaling $50,000 at Stanford Medical School.

The idea for the Glow Run, however, did not come from the Buckners. Rather, the race was the brainchild of the foundation’s recently formed student leadership team, aptly named the DB7 Junior Board.

“I was looking for ways to get more involved,” Wolfe said, “so I reached out to the Buckners. They put me in touch with Julia (Bazianos), and we had the idea to start a youth board for the foundation.”

Right now, the board totals two: Wolfe and Bazianos. The duo, undeterred by size, quickly began laying the groundwork for the Glow Run earlier this year.

“They called me on the phone one day in April,” remembered Karen Buckner, Dylan’s mother, “and within 20 minutes we were brainstorming ideas for the event.”

While Wolfe, Bazianos and the Buckners had high hopes for the race, they were not entirely sure what to expect. “It’s our first event as a board,” Bazianos said. “We weren’t sure anybody was going to show up.”

They optimistically ordered 65 T-shirts and set a fundraising goal of $7,000, a benchmark Wolfe said the team “never thought we’d meet.”

The board certainly didn’t imagine that they would smash the goal a week in advance of the event. With seven days to go and just more than 100 racers registered, the DB7 team bumped their fundraising target to $10,777 — “To keep with the sevens,” Wolfe said — but ended up breaking that ceiling again just a couple days later.

By the time the racers crossed the finish line Friday evening, all 180 of them, the Glow Run had raised more than $16,000 for the foundation. That number has surpassed $17,000 as of press time.

Participating students at a number of local high schools — including Glenbrook North, Glenbrook South, New Trier and Loyola Academy — banded together with their peers in fundraising teams. Many others donated individually.

“It’s amazing to see how many people are showing up, how many people are giving,” Bazianos said.

Also important for Wolfe and Bazianos, however, is the attention the race is attracting for their youth board. 

“We were hoping the Glow Run would get more people interested in signing up,” Wolfe said.

Luckily, their efforts seem to be working. As students and families checked in for the race, the interest sheet Wolfe and Bazianos set out for prospective DB7 board members was rapidly filling with signatures.

“With more people involved, we’re hoping to keep this tradition running and hold a Glow Run every year,” Wolfe said. “And in the future, we want to hold a lot of different events with a lot more people.”

Karen Buckner said that, through their work over the past few months, the girls have breathed new life into the foundation.

“With so much fundraising and organizing on social media these days, it’s crucial to have young people involved,” she said. “We just had an incoming high school freshman sign up for the youth board. That’s what’s going to keep these traditions, and this organization, going.”

In the minutes leading up to the race, Karen Buckner was running around just as much as Wolfe and Bazianos, greeting guests and registering racers with the machine-like energy of a seasoned event planner.

But as runners began to congregate at the start line, she swapped metaphorical hats to say a few words — no longer as race coordinator or foundation director, but as Dylan’s mom.

“Ya know, in a card Dylan once gave me, he wrote, ‘Mom, I wanna run races together,’” she said with tears in her eyes. “So today, I’m running this with him.”

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Dozens of cars, trucks and other vehicles were gathered for a June 3 car show designed to raise awareness of mental health and suicide prevention.

Josh Stewart organized the inaugural Breaking the Stigma Car Show at the Lake County Fairgrounds in honor of his 21-year-old son, Corey, who died by suicide in April 2022. Representatives from local mental health organizations attended the show, which raised funds for the Lake County affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Stewart was motivated to start the show by his and Corey’s shared interest in cars.

“I felt, after his suicide and learning more and more about mental health and suicide prevention, that there wasn’t a lot of talk publicly,” he said.

“Instead of turning to alcohol and being upset about my son’s death, I took all those emotions of anger, sadness, confusion and I said, I need to do something positive, so I decided to do a car show since my son loved car shows,” Stewart added. “He’s a motorhead just like I am.”

The selection of vehicles ranged from classic cars to trucks, a military vehicle and Painesville Township fire engines. There were awards across a variety of categories, including best of show, NAMI’s choice and veterans choice.

Kim Davis brought his 1966 Volkswagen Dune Buggy to the event.

“They need to have more things like this so there’s more awareness and everything like that,” Davis said. “Nobody needs to go like that.”

Shawn Hamrick came from Niles with his 2019 Peterbilt “Remember Everyone Deployed” truck, which is designed to honor service members.

“First chance I had to do something for suicide, being that my brothers committed suicide, I’m for it,” he said. “Bring awareness, help people out.”

• Visitors to the Breaking the Stigma Car Show look at classic cars. (Bryson Durst — The News-Herald).

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  Trucks, including engines from the Painesville Township Fire Department, are displayed at the Breaking the Stigma Car Show. (Bryson Durst — The News-Herald).

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  A military vehicle is displayed at the Breaking the Stigma Car Show. (Bryson Durst — The News-Herald).

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  A table near the entrance to the Breaking the Stigma Car Show displays the show’s awards, while a nearby poster recognizes Corey Stewart. (Bryson Durst — The News-Herald).

The event also included food trucks, while various businesses and organizations entered the show as vendors. Among those vendors were NAMI Lake County and Crossroads Health.

“The importance of an event like this is to bring mental health to the forefront, getting more people out and aware of what’s available in their community as far as resources,” said Crossroads Community Development Coordinator Scott Smith.

He noted that Crossroads offers services including counseling, dual diagnosis and group therapy, as well as primary care.

“Now we can see the whole patient,” Smith said. You come in for mental health services, we can also test your blood sugar as well.”

He noted that people can reach Crossroads at crossroadshealth.org or 440-255-1700. According to the organization’s website, it operates locations in Mentor, Painesville and Willoughby.

Joanna Mannon and Ashlee Himes both came to represent NAMI Lake County. They noted that the organization offers support groups for people with mental health conditions and their loved ones, with specific groups for veterans and people with substance use disorder. It also offers advocacy, education programs and support for parents, among other services.

Mannon noted that all of NAMI’s services are free.

“They always say it takes a village to raise children,” Himes said. “It also takes a village to support adults and stuff, so we’re really trying to be that village for people that feel like they don’t have a village, or feel isolated.”

More information is available at namilakecountyohio.org or by calling 440-639-1200.

The car show raised funds through a $20 participant fee, a Chinese auction and a raffle, Stewart said. Around 80 cars had pre-registered before the event.

In addition to raising awareness, he expressed hope that the event would save a life and teach visitors “what to look for within their own loved ones.”

“It’s ok not to be ok, it’s ok to find somebody to talk to, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Stewart added.

According to the NAMI Lake County crisis webpage, the Lake County Crisis Hotline can be reached at any time by calling 440-953-8255. A trained crisis counselor can also be reached by texting NAMI to 741-741.

Stewart added that people can dial 988 for the national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. According to the website, veterans can press 1 after dialing 988 to access the Veterans Crisis Line.

“Make sure you utilize that, because they’re licensed therapists, they’re there to help you out and make sure you get out of that dark place and back into the light,” he said.

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In a recent study published in the Journal of Eating Disorders, researchers examine the impact of negative body and age talk with mental health and quality of life (QoL) outcomes in men and women.

Study: Fat talk, old talk, or both? Association of negative body talk with mental health, body dissatisfaction, and quality of life in men and women. Image Credit: Alex_Maryna / Shutterstock.com

The health effects of body dissatisfaction

Adolescent boys and girls who experience body dissatisfaction are at an increased risk of developing depressive symptoms, eating disorder (ED) symptoms, low self-esteem, and suicidal ideation. Anxiety, psychological distress, depression, and ED pathology have also been correlated with body dissatisfaction in adult men. Comparatively, middle-aged women experiencing body dissatisfaction are at a greater risk of restrained eating, experiencing bulimic symptoms, thin-ideal internalization, aging anxiety, and depression.

Negative body talk, including ‘fat talk,’ has been found to significantly contribute to body dissatisfaction. Fat talk often causes the affected individual to strive for Western appearance ideals, such as a thinner or more muscular body in women and men, respectively. In addition to fat talk, the pressure for people, particularly women, to age gracefully while also maintaining a thin body can also lead to significant stress.

Collectively, negative or seemingly positive phrases on both body weight and an individual’s age-related appearance can be described as ‘negative age-related body talk.’ Several studies have investigated the relationship between both old and fat talk to health effects, with old talk significantly correlated with body image disturbances, ED pathology, and aging anxiety.

Despite these observations, researchers are still studying how old talk, fat talk, or their combination can affect body imaging, aging anxiety, ED pathology, and mental health. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the poorer health outcomes associated with old talk can be attributed to its similarities with fat talk, or whether it is unique in its impact to both body dissatisfaction and mental health effects.

About the study

The current study included 778 adults, 288 of whom were men and 490 were women, between 18 and 91 years of age who were recruited from various sources including online social media platforms, clinics, local senior centers, coffee shops, libraries, and networks of the research team. The study participants were recruited from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western European countries. About 64% of the participants were White/Caucasian, 18% were Hispanic, 4.5% Asian, and 4.2% Black/African American.

An online survey distributed to the participants was used to assess how often they engaged in fat talk and old talk, levels of body dissatisfaction, depression, ED pathology, aging anxiety, QoL, general anxiety, and demographics.

The Negative Body Talk Scale (NBTS), which was used to evaluate engagement in fat talk, included 13 items that created a body concerns and body comparison subscale based on the responses. A modified 13-item NBTS was also created to assess old talk, with participants rating the frequency of saying a particular phrase on a seven-point Likert scale that ranged from “never” to “always.”

The ED-15, which consists of 10 attitudinal items and five eating behavior items, was used to evaluate ED pathology based on a six-point Likert scale. Total scores were obtained by averaging the 10 attitudinal items, with a higher total score reflecting a greater degree of ED pathology.

The Body Satisfaction Questionnaire-16b is a 16-item scale that asks about an individual’s body image, negative feelings, and any actions that the individual takes to cope with these feelings. Responses were based on a six-point Likert scale, with higher scores reflecting a greater level of body dissatisfaction.

An eight-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8), which was scored on a four-point scale, was used to assess depressive symptoms, with higher scores also indicating more severe depressive symptoms. Anxiety about Aging Scale (AAS) with a five-point Likert scale was used to measure aging anxiety, whereas the General Anxiety Scale was used to assess anxiety symptoms. The EUROHIS QOL eight-item index was used to assess the psychological, physical, social, and environmental aspects of an individual’s QoL.

Study findings

Engaging in fat talk and a higher body mass index value (BMI) was significantly associated with increased ED pathology. Notably, women more frequently engaged in both old and fat talk, both of which were associated with a greater risk of ED pathology and poorer QoL in women.

Increased fat talk was also associated with higher levels of body dissatisfaction and depressive symptoms, while older age was linked to lower levels of body dissatisfaction.

Comparatively, old talk did not affect ED pathology nor body dissatisfaction, with older age instead associated with reduced ED pathology. Old talk did not appear to impact depressive symptoms.

In men, a greater amount of old and fat talk was associated with greater general anxiety. Old talk, rather than fat talk, increased the risk of aging anxiety in women, with older age in women associated with less anxiety and a better QoL.

Conclusions

Fat talk appears to have a greater impact on mental health and QoL measures as compared to old talk; however, both types of negative body talk were significantly correlated with QoL and mental health. The extent to which these factors influence body image and mental health throughout a person’s life remains unclear. A better understanding this phenomenon can help promote mental health and body image, particularly in midlife and beyond.

Journal reference:

• Hooper, S. C., Kilpela, L. S., Ogubuike, V., et al. (2023). Fat talk, old talk, or both? Association of negative body talk with mental health, body dissatisfaction, and quality of life in men and women. Journal of Eating Disorders 11(77). doi:10.1186/s40337-023-00803-1

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