A Farmington resident is among the 10 UConn medical and dental students riding their bicycles across the country this summer to raise money for Mental Health Connecticut.
Pat Lau, a 2013 graduate of Farmington High School, has just finished up his first year of medical school, at the UConn School of Medicine in Farmington.
On June 9, Lau flew to Seattle before departing from Anacortes, Wash. on a bike ride across the United States.
“We will physically touch our bikes to the Pacific Ocean,” Lau said.
The ride, which is in its 13th year, has become a tradition for the select group of UConn medical and dental students who choose to participate in the annual fundraising program each year.
This year’s group chose to raise money for Mental Health Connecticut, with a set goal of $20,000. They’re currently over halfway to that goal. Donations can be made on the Mental Health Connecticut website.
Lau, who is interested in emergency medicine, said Mental Health Connecticut was chosen because mental health is a topic relevant to them as medical students.
“We ended up with mental health for a couple of reasons,” Lau said. “For the past 12 years, no one has done mental health-related charity. We thought, as a group, that it’s an underappreciated topic and that it’s particularly relevant as future medical professionals ourselves. I want to emphasize that mental health is underappreciated.”
Lau also said that mental health can be a problem in the medical field for physicians and medical students themselves.
“According to the American Medical Association, suicide rates among physicians are something like 40 to 70 percent higher in males and 130 to 300 percent higher in women,” Lau wrote for his class. “In addition, suicide is the second most common cause of death among medical students.”
Lau said he believes the field he aspires to enter into might not particularly push physicians to talk about their own mental health problems.
“It’s definitely high stress,” Lau said. “Everyday, you are in potentially very stressful situations that you take home with you everyday.”
When it comes to biking, Lau just started getting into the activity last year with this trip in mind. The group of 10 is splitting into three groups. They’ll be following a trail called the Northern Tier to make their way back to Connecticut.
“It’s an established route, but it’s not perfect,” Lau said. “We have an idea of what route we are taking. We don’t have a guide. People have asked me if we’ll have a support car, but we won’t. It’s basically up to us to use problem solving everyday to get where we need to go. We plan to sleep outside every night with tents. But once in awhile, we might get a motel room to recharge.”
The riding will be intense, as they hope to finish the trip in around two months.
“We will be riding at least five times a week, probably six,” Lau said. “We will be averaging 50 to 100 miles a day. We hope to be done in under 60 days, probably closer to 55. Otherwise, we will be late to school.”
For Lau, the trip is a chance to not only raise money for a good cause, but to explore the United States from a unique perspective before medical school truly ramps up and free time becomes few and far between. He described this coming summer as the last truly “free” summer he’ll have to himself, and there’s no better way to spend it than by challenging himself for the benefit of something positive.
“One of my biggest motivations is that I’ve been in Connecticut my whole life,” Lau said. “I wanted to explore outside Connecticut. I want to explore the country and meet new people. There’s going to be times this summer that I’m going to want to quit. But I’m hanging out with three of my best friends from school. We have a really good group going.”
When Lau returns, he will literally be riding his bike home, as the return point is Farmington. After that, they’ll head down to the shoreline to touch their bikes in the water of the Long Island Sound, technically completing their coast to coast bike ride from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean.
