A famous athlete turns mental wellness advocate.

Harry Miller’s decision to abandon football has changed his life. By coming up about his difficulties with mental health, he’s impacting student-athletes nationwide.

Ohio State mechanical engineering student and former football player Harry Miller has come forward and disclosed his mental health difficulties in hopes of helping others. (Jodi Miller)

Harry Miller’s change is highlighted by the former Ohio State football player’s physical look.

Miller has lost 80 pounds since he last wore a Buckeyes uniform in 2021, when his 6-foot-4 frame weighed 315 and his then-private struggle for mental wellness felt too hard at times for the offensive lineman to carry.

I wanted to physically transform, but also because doing so sort of gave me permission to say I’m a new person now, Miller says.

A scale isn’t necessary to evaluate how Miller has changed since March 2022, when he revealed in a post on X (previously known as Twitter) that he was medically retiring from football because his long struggle with anxiety and depression caused him to ponder suicide in 2021.

In his own words, Miller feels liberated while keeping welcomed ties to the football program without team obligations.

Lighter in mind as well as body, he is reading voraciously, writing fiction, working in cinema, playing a variety of musical instruments, and enjoying study groups with fellow students who, like him, are majoring in mechanical engineering.

I feel like I’ve gotten closer to my genuine self, which has been very rewarding, says Miller, on pace to graduate in December with a 4.0 grade point average. It’s hard for me to imagine that a lot of stuff has transpired in a year and a half. March 2022 seems like a lifetime ago.

“Harry is not only an embodiment of resilience but also a promoter of resilience. His experience shows how there is help out there—treatments that work—and that it may actually be transformative.”

March 2022 was when Miller’s passionate 736-word statement on X went viral, garnering national media attention—including his appearance on NBC’s Today show—and pushing him to become an advocate for mental wellness.

Harry is incredibly clever, very caring, and very empathetic, says Ohio State psychiatrist Dr. Joshua Norman, who has worked with Miller. He wants other people to know that mental health concerns are prevalent, there are other people going through this, and you can get better. You can work through it. There’s a lot of support out there.

Miller thanks Buckeyes coach Ryan Day and Ohio State Sport Psychology and Wellness Services, which has Norman and three other full-time mental health experts working within the athletic department to service all 36 varsity sports, for saving his life with care and understanding.

Day has kept Miller on scholarship and feeling at home at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, where he works out most mornings. Miller cheered from Ohio State’s sidelines during all 2022 home games and when the Buckeyes played Georgia in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal Peach Bowl. He expects to sit in the Ohio Stadium stands at games this season.

Miller believes the everlasting friendship of former teammates has been incredibly useful, as has been the support that he’s felt from his own family, fellow students, engineering instructors, and Buckeye fans everywhere.

Harry is not only the epitome of resilience but also a champion of resilience, says Dr. K. Luan Phan, chair of the Ohio State Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. His tale shows how there is help out there—treatments that work—and that it may actually be transforming. It’s a powerful testament and can make a major difference in destigmatizing issues around mental health and mental wellness.

Miller says he has learned since March 2022 how much others care for him, and now he’s attempting to help others by sharing his own experiences.

My experience is broadly accessible, he says, because, sadly, that’s the reality so many people are dealing with.”

Miller didn’t see himself the way others viewed him when he arrived at Ohio State in 2019 as a much-celebrated five-star recruit.

For a very long time, I had to assume this identity of being a football player, he explains.

Miller managed to compartmentalize his athletic identity alongside his own diverse interests, but it wasn’t easy. “It felt like every time I went home, I had to take off my skin and hop into another piece of flesh, he adds.

Still, Miller played well on the football field, starting six games for the Buckeyes in 2020 and causing NFL agents to expect him to someday be an early-round NFL draft pick.

My football duty rose, and consequently, the expectations of others and the largeness of that character I had to portray increased,” Miller adds.

His identity issue reached a crucial point in the weeks leading up to the 2021 season as expectations for the team, himself, and his probable NFL future circulated with greater intensity. Miller told Day that he meant to kill himself. Day, who, at nine years old, lost his father to suicide, immediately arranged for and encouraged Miller to contact Ohio State counselors.

Luckily, I had Coach Day here, Miller says. “Had I gone into this decision in a vacuum, I would have assumed nobody had my back, in which case it would have made perfect sense to commit suicide.”

The contribution fit with the advocacy work of Day and his wife, who created the Christina and Ryan Day Fund for Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Wellness at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 2019. Last year, the Days also founded a resilience fund in their name and gave $1 million for research and treatment at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine