Can theatre improve youth mental health? Miami professor aims to find out
Matt Omasta was awarded a $300,000 grant to assess a touring theatre program
•
Published
Abbie Herbold and Caroline Martin are working with Matt Omasta to assess Imagination Stage's touring educational theatre program.
Can theatre improve youth mental health? Miami professor aims to find out
Matt Omasta was awarded a $300,000 grant to assess a touring theatre program
•
Published
Can theatre have a positive impact on mental health? This is the question that Miami University’s Matt Omasta, professor and chair of the Department of Theatre, has been tasked with answering after being approached by the Imagination Stage, a theatre company that specializes in the performing arts and professional theatre education for young audiences with an emphasis on positive youth development.
According to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration survey in 2023, 18.1% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 experienced a major depressive episode within the last year. Young people dealing with mental health challenges like anxiety and depression prompted Kaiser Permanente, a health insurance and medical care company, to commission Imagination Stage for an educational theatre program on mental health topics touring nationwide. By engaging with live theatre, Kaiser Permanente and Imagination Stage hope young people will develop better habits and the tools to build resilience.
“The idea is early intervention. By providing these interventions for mental health through the arts, we can help promote wellbeing and reduce the risk of complications later,” Omasta said. “We’re integrating an arts experience and a wellness program in a way that serves the goals of both: giving high quality theater experience to young people and achieving health and wellness goals.”
The current program consists of an interactive performance and play for students and a professional development workshop for teachers and staff.
“Empathy Quest” is an interactive performance for second, third, and fourth graders that uses cognitive behavioral therapy principles. When a high-stakes countdown is triggered by an AI malfunction, the Password Rangers will need a little help to fix it. Students in the audience become “Junior Password Rangers”, participating in exercises, games, and discussion to help them learn about emotional regulation, empathy, and how to identify trusted adults.
“Ghosted” is a play for older students from seventh to tenth grade. It follows three students as they navigate stress, depression, grief, and how to lean on one another after a school tragedy.
“Some people when they hear ‘theater about mental health,’ they think very cheesy, very didactic, talking down to the audience. Kaiser went with this theater to have it not be that, for it to be truly high quality, engaging theater productions that young people are going to enjoy and hopefully take away these mental health benefits,” Omasta said. “It’s embedding the content into a stronger, dramatic narrative that people are going to find interesting.”
Two undergraduate research assistants, Abbie Herbold and Caroline Martin, joined Omasta and began working on the project with him in September 2025. The team is using quantitative and qualitative data, consisting of surveys and focus groups with educators all across the country, to assess the impact of the program on helping young people learn emotional regulation and empathy. The team will also be collaborating with Imagination Stage to provide suggestions on how to refine its programming over the course of the three year program. The assessment will conclude in 2028.
Omasta’s previous empirical theater research for young audiences led to Imagination Stage approaching him in spring 2025 with this research opportunity. He was awarded a $300,000 grant to be a third-party evaluator and assess their touring theatre program.
“We’ve been trusted by one of the largest professional theatres for young people in the country to do this program assessment for them. I think that speaks to recognition of the university’s expertise in theater,” Omasta said. “It’s also giving our students the opportunity to learn about the ways that data and social science methods can be infused into the arts, how we can use standardized and reliable methods of inquiry to look at things that are often considered to be more amorphous and difficult to explore. Not a lot of students have the opportunity to work on research like that, especially as undergraduates.”
Imagination Stage was established in 1979 as Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts to provide art education to young people. They run productions with professional actors and commission new works for children every year.
According to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration survey in 2023, 18.1% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 experienced a major depressive episode within the last year. Young people dealing with mental health challenges like anxiety and depression prompted Kaiser Permanente, a health insurance and medical care company, to commission Imagination Stage for an educational theatre program on mental health topics touring nationwide. By engaging with live theatre, Kaiser Permanente and Imagination Stage hope young people will develop better habits and the tools to build resilience.
“The idea is early intervention. By providing these interventions for mental health through the arts, we can help promote wellbeing and reduce the risk of complications later,” Omasta said. “We’re integrating an arts experience and a wellness program in a way that serves the goals of both: giving high quality theater experience to young people and achieving health and wellness goals.”
The current program consists of an interactive performance and play for students and a professional development workshop for teachers and staff.
“Empathy Quest” is an interactive performance for second, third, and fourth graders that uses cognitive behavioral therapy principles. When a high-stakes countdown is triggered by an AI malfunction, the Password Rangers will need a little help to fix it. Students in the audience become “Junior Password Rangers”, participating in exercises, games, and discussion to help them learn about emotional regulation, empathy, and how to identify trusted adults.
“Ghosted” is a play for older students from seventh to tenth grade. It follows three students as they navigate stress, depression, grief, and how to lean on one another after a school tragedy.
“Some people when they hear ‘theater about mental health,’ they think very cheesy, very didactic, talking down to the audience. Kaiser went with this theater to have it not be that, for it to be truly high quality, engaging theater productions that young people are going to enjoy and hopefully take away these mental health benefits,” Omasta said. “It’s embedding the content into a stronger, dramatic narrative that people are going to find interesting.”
Two undergraduate research assistants, Abbie Herbold and Caroline Martin, joined Omasta and began working on the project with him in September 2025. The team is using quantitative and qualitative data, consisting of surveys and focus groups with educators all across the country, to assess the impact of the program on helping young people learn emotional regulation and empathy. The team will also be collaborating with Imagination Stage to provide suggestions on how to refine its programming over the course of the three year program. The assessment will conclude in 2028.
Omasta’s previous empirical theater research for young audiences led to Imagination Stage approaching him in spring 2025 with this research opportunity. He was awarded a $300,000 grant to be a third-party evaluator and assess their touring theatre program.
“We’ve been trusted by one of the largest professional theatres for young people in the country to do this program assessment for them. I think that speaks to recognition of the university’s expertise in theater,” Omasta said. “It’s also giving our students the opportunity to learn about the ways that data and social science methods can be infused into the arts, how we can use standardized and reliable methods of inquiry to look at things that are often considered to be more amorphous and difficult to explore. Not a lot of students have the opportunity to work on research like that, especially as undergraduates.”
Imagination Stage was established in 1979 as Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts to provide art education to young people. They run productions with professional actors and commission new works for children every year.
Established in 1809, Miami University is located in Oxford, Ohio, with regional campuses in Hamilton and Middletown, a learning center in West Chester, and a European study center in Luxembourg. Interested in learning more about the College of Creative Arts? Visit the website for more information.