{"id":3623,"date":"2026-07-13T07:36:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T07:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3623"},"modified":"2026-07-13T07:36:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T07:36:54","slug":"christena-huntsman-lost-her-sister-to-mental-illness-she-doesnt-want-that-to-happen-to-anyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3623","title":{"rendered":"Christena Huntsman lost her sister to mental illness; she doesn\u2019t want that to happen to anyone else"},"content":{"rendered":"

The enormity of what\u2019s going on at the University of Utah to confront and treat mental illness is in many ways unequal to anything in the world.<\/p>

Read more Mr. Holtzclaw goes to Washington<\/a><\/p>

There\u2019s the 162-bed psychiatric hospital on Chipeta Way that underwent a major transformation in 2019\u20132021; there\u2019s the Kem and Carolyn Gardner Mental Health Crisis Center that opened last year in South Salt Lake to care for emergency and acute cases; and there\u2019s the nearly-completed 185,000-square-foot Utah Mental Health Translational Research Center, a facility adjacent to the hospital with room for 100-plus of the kind of premier mental health researchers a cutting-edge place like that is bound to attract.<\/p>

In the space of less than seven years, thanks to many benefactors \u2014 including the University of Utah Health system, generous support from the Legislature and numerous private donors \u2014 Utah is becoming the very epicenter in the battle against mental illness. <\/p>

And all because of the love one woman has for her sister.<\/p>

To find the spark that started the Utah mental health revolution, you need to go back to two girls growing up side by side in the 1960s and 1970s. <\/p>

Christena was born first, in 1964, the third child and first daughter of Jon M. and Karen Huntsman. The Huntsman surname wasn\u2019t famous then like it is now. Jon was yet to invent the clamshell burger container for McDonald\u2019s that paved the way to his $12 billion chemical company, which in turn produced, among many other philanthropic projects, the Huntsman Cancer Institute.<\/p>

Next came Kathleen, born in January 1966, 17 months after her big sister.<\/p>

Christena and Kathleen were best pals from day one. They shared a bedroom as the family moved from California to Washington, D.C., to Utah. They talked about anything and everything. They knew each other\u2019s hopes and dreams.<\/p>

As much as they were alike, they were also different. Christena tended to throw open the drapes in the morning and announce, \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful day!\u201d while Kathleen would just as often say, \u201cShut the drapes, not every single day is beautiful.\u201d<\/p>

Kathleen developed eating disorders. Then she started to self-medicate with addictive substances. None of it happened all at once. Her problems were looked at as weaknesses, not symptoms. The antidote was pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work harder, tough it out. No one mentioned depression. No one thought the problem might be in her brain. No one probed to figure out the \u201cwhy\u201d beyond the \u201cwhat.\u201d<\/p>

Untreated for mental illness, Kathleen\u2019s life began to spiral out of control. In 2010, at the age of 44, an overdose plunged her into cardiac arrest. Her billionaire father had to pull the plug on the machines keeping her alive.<\/p>

The Huntsmans shut the drapes and kept Kathleen\u2019s issues private. When her older brother Jon Jr., the former Utah governor, wrote her obituary, he didn\u2019t say a word about mental illness. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want anyone to know,\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cWe kept it so quiet,\u201d says Christena. \u201cThis kind of thing didn\u2019t happen to families like ours. There was so much shame and stigma attached.\u201d<\/p>

After Kathleen\u2019s funeral, the Huntsmans continued to suffer in silence \u2014 but as the grieving process progressed, a gradual shift in the family\u2019s thinking began to take place. They started to ask questions.<\/p>

Read more 4 fights Congress faces before the midterms<\/a><\/p>

Why was it shameful? Why was there a stigma? A family that was literally trying to cure cancer pondered on why mental illness wasn\u2019t also being looked at and treated like a disease instead of like a medieval plague.<\/p>

Before Jon Sr. died in 2018, he gathered his eight living children around him and challenged them to \u201cgo find the cancer of your generation\u201d and take it on.<\/p>

Christena did not hesitate in designating mental illness as the cancer of her generation.<\/p>

The next year, with the family\u2019s consent, Christena gifted $150 million from the Huntsman Family Foundation to University of Utah Health for mental healthcare.<\/p>

After accepting the gift and noting it was the largest single donation ever given to the school, then-University of Utah president Ruth Watkins had another request.<\/p>

\u201cYour money is great,\u201d she said, \u201cbut what we need and want is your name on the building.\u201d<\/p>

Adding \u201cHuntsman\u201d to the title would add priceless de-stygmatizing credibility. <\/p>

The family agreed. In January of 2021, the former University Neuropsychiatric Institute became the Huntsman Mental Health Institute. (Of note: In Jon Huntsman Jr.\u2019s campaign for governor in 2020, he made mental health and suicide prevention a big part of his platform, openly mentioning his sister Kathleen\u2019s struggles and the need to bring mental illness out of the shadows.)<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m just honored to get to spearhead and be the leader in our family around mental health,\u201d says Christena, who wears two hats, one as CEO of the Huntsman Mental Health Foundation and another as a director with the Huntsman Family Foundation.<\/p>

She comes to work every day \u201cand works harder than any of us,\u201d says Brett Graham, CEO of the Huntsman Mental Health Institute.<\/p>

\u201cI hear Dad\u2019s voice, gotta move faster, gotta move faster,\u201d Christena says. \u201cHe would always say cancer moves fast, we gotta move faster. I don\u2019t feel we\u2019re moving fast enough. I want the world to see the work that\u2019s being done here, the lives that can be helped. I wish I knew then what I know now, because if Kathleen had the treatments and facilities we have now, she may be here today to talk about her recovery.<\/p>

\u201cLet\u2019s get people help on the front end before they become homeless, before they become an addict, before tragedy takes over. We\u2019re going to change the way we look and treat and talk about mental illness.<\/p>

Read more Ace Bailey leaves Jazz Summer League game early, again, with back spasms<\/a><\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s personal for me. I lost my sister.\u201d<\/p>

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Utah is fast becoming the epicenter of the mental health revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-utah"],"yoast_head":"\nChristena Huntsman lost her sister to mental illness; she doesn\u2019t want that to happen to anyone else - American Movers Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3623\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christena Huntsman lost her sister to mental illness; she doesn\u2019t want that to happen to anyone else - American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Utah is fast becoming the epicenter of the mental health revolution.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3623\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-13T07:36:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=3623#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=3623\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/b68c8483906c0d2987f271455f0177af\"},\"headline\":\"Christena Huntsman lost her sister to mental illness; 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