Yale School of Medicine Receives $10 Million Gift to Fuel Support for Children’s Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being

Yale School of Medicine (YSM) has received a $10 million gift from Bukhman Philanthropies, a London-based foundation founded by Daria and Dmitri Bukhman, to support YSM’s Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) and YCSC’s two initiatives: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI) and the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program. The award will fund projects to develop evidence-based interventions and scale tools that strengthen the mental health and emotional well-being of children and young adults. The initiatives are led by Marc Brackett, PhD, founding director of YCEI and professor at YCSC; Wendy Silverman, PhD, Alfred A. Messer Professor at YCSC and professor of psychology; and Eli Lebowitz, PhD, associate professor at YCSC.

“We are grateful to Bukhman Philanthropies for their extraordinary gift,” says Nancy J. Brown, MD, the Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Yale School of Medicine. “It is an investment in children and families to promote emotional health. Their generosity will help our faculty translate science into practical tools—strengthening emotional well-being and development in young people, supporting parents, improving access to care, and advancing research that meets today’s challenges, including the realities of social media in a rapidly changing world.”

According to the World Health Organization, globally, one in seven (14.3%) 10- to 19-year-olds experience a mental disorder. Depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders are among the leading causes of illness and disability in adolescents, and suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds.

“I’m deeply grateful for the generous support of Bukhman Philanthropies, which strengthens the work we do every day to improve the mental health and well-being of children and families,” says Linda Mayes, MD, chair of YCSC and the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology. “This kind of investment encourages innovative solutions to promote healthy and positive development while addressing the mental health needs of children and adolescents—and helps us translate new ideas and discoveries more quickly into impactful, real-world applications. Just as important, it signals confidence in our department’s mission and in the people who carry it forward.”

Daria’s commitment is shaped by her childhood. Born in Lithuania, she grew up in a small town in northern Russia, Vologda, and describes coming from a “lower middle-class family,” raised by her mother, a pediatrician, and her father, a pilot.

“From an early age, I witnessed my mother sharing her time and kindness with others: bringing hot meals to an elderly neighbor, caring for stray kittens, or helping baby birds that had fallen from their nests,” Daria reflects. “I think these small moments shaped me deeply and showed me that philanthropy, in its original sense—the ‘love of humankind’—can take many forms.” Her first philanthropic gift was toward an intensive care neonatal unit in a London hospital.

Daria graduated from Vologda State Pedagogical University, where she studied English language and culture, and began a career spanning marketing, public relations, and business development.

During maternity leave, she pursued a set of interests that speak to the whole-person approach she now champions: she became certified as a health coach, as well as a prenatal and postnatal nutrition consultant and yoga teacher.

Daria lists “strong female philanthropists,” such as Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and Cari Tuna, as her inspiration. “Their approach—thoughtful, generous, trust-based, and urgent—resonates deeply with me.” She is also inspired by the frontline workers and scientists she meets. “Their dedication and rigor in helping others is both humbling and motivating.”

Her husband, Dmitri, is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Playrix, one of the world’s largest mobile gaming companies.

Daria was inspired to support YSM after listening to a health podcast featuring Brackett. “A few years ago, I heard Dr. Brackett speak on the Huberman Lab podcast,” she says. “His childhood story of bullying and abuse touched me deeply.”

What moved her, she explains, was not only the hardship, but also the transformation of it into a mission—“driving what he calls an ‘emotional revolution,’ teaching children to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate their emotions.”

“In a fast-changing world shaped by rapid technological advancement, including AI, I believe that the qualities that make us truly human—emotional awareness, empathy, and connection—will become more valuable than ever. Young people today face a wide range of pressures—from academic demands and socioeconomic challenges to the complexities of the digital environment and social media,” Daria says. “As parents, we have a responsibility to equip the next generation with the tools and support they need to lead meaningful, resilient, and fulfilling lives.”

Daria describes what she and Dmitri hope their philanthropy will unlock:

• For every child, regardless of their socioeconomic background, to have access to tools that help them understand and regulate their emotions, building emotional intelligence from an early age.

• Empower parents of anxious children—the most prevalent mental health condition among young people globally—with practical tools and strategies to support their children.

• To better understand how social media shapes young people’s lives, both positively and negatively, through rigorous research, with the aim of developing evidence-based approaches that maximize its benefits while mitigating its risks.

At YCEI, Brackett has long argued that emotional skills are learnable, and that teaching them systematically changes the trajectory of classrooms, families, and communities. The Bukhman investment arrives at what he calls “a pivotal moment.”

Brackett met Daria through his work with the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he serves as an advisor and co-creator of the Shaping Us framework for early childhood education. “From our very first conversation, it was clear that we share the same passion for a world where all children and adults learn and apply the skills of emotional intelligence to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives,” Brackett says.

“To learn that Daria and Dmitri chose to invest so significantly in YCEI’s work filled me with deep gratitude, tremendous hope, and profound determination.” He shares that this is the largest gift to support YCEI since its founding in 2013. “It will fund the next phase of YCEI’s mission to support children and adults in cultivating emotion skills so that they can thrive in school, work, and life.”

The world that young people inhabit today, Brackett emphasizes, is not emotionally neutral. “Youth anxiety and depression are at historic highs, and educator stress and burnout are driving teachers out of the profession,” he says. “At the same time, funding for evidence-based approaches to cultivating social and emotional skills is being scaled back significantly.”

A major focus is scaling RULER (Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating), YCEI’s approach to teaching emotional intelligence. “As the world continues to change at an unprecedented pace, YCEI is committed to strategic, sustainable implementation of RULER—our approach to teaching emotional intelligence—that has already been adopted by 5,000 schools worldwide,” Brackett says. He adds that RULER has already reached over 200,000 educators and 5 million students across more than 30 countries.

Brackett says that the Bukhman gift supports the next stage of scaling with “high rigor and fidelity,” including core infrastructure. “A significant portion will help create the digital platforms and tech-enabled products necessary to bring RULER to more schools across the globe, creating the next generation of emotionally intelligent leaders, educators, and students. This gift will also strengthen YCEI’s ability to maintain a rigorous research agenda on the science and practice of emotional intelligence, and translate our findings into practical, evidence-based resources that transform individuals, school climate, and entire communities.”

For Silverman, the gift from Bukhman Philanthropies will support two intervention development and evaluation projects using co-design principles and randomized controlled clinical trial designs.

One project focuses on building and testing a digitized parent intervention for child anxiety—an approach intended to increase access and reduce barriers for families. Silverman points to a gap: digital platforms can expand reach, but few exist for parents of children with anxiety disorders that are guided by strong theory and research. The project will develop and test a program grounded in strong theory and research findings to help parents manage their child’s anxious behavior.

For the second project, Silverman will develop and test an intervention program to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of socially anxious adolescents’ use of social media, delivering a set of strategies that will facilitate their use of this medium in ways that are protective rather than harmful, and evaluating whether the intervention improves anxiety treatment outcomes.

“I was deeply honored and thrilled when I learned of Daria and Dmitri’s gift,” says Silverman. “I was moved beyond words by their strong and clear desire to improve the lives of children and families. The impact of their gift is enormous.”

“Obtaining external research funding support has perhaps never been more challenging for scientists,” Silverman says. “As a result, funds from Bukhman Philanthropies truly can make all the difference in whether new discoveries and novel treatments are developed and tested. This is particularly important for anxiety disorders, which are the most prevalent and among the most impairing childhood mental health conditions. There is an urgent need to have more effective and accessible interventions for childhood anxiety disorders, and this need cannot currently be met in the absence of philanthropic support.”

And the stakes are high. Silverman notes that if childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders go untreated, they can lead to other severe mental health problems, along with suicidality, while creating day-to-day distress for parents, including financial burden. She cites the global economic burden of childhood anxiety disorders as about $266.8 billion, reflecting health care costs, productivity losses, and education-related costs.

Lebowitz’s work is anchored in a simple but powerful idea that resonates strongly with the Bukhmans’ desire to equip parents: “helping parents to help children.”

When he learned of the Bukhman gift, Lebowitz says, “I felt grateful and energized. Energized to launch two clinical trials that I have wanted to do for years.”

Lebowitz developed SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), a parent-based treatment. The Bukhman gift funds two clinical trials extending SPACE into two under-addressed areas: picky eating and chronic pain. “Together, they lay the foundation for something genuinely new: the first transdiagnostic, parent-based treatment framework,” says Lebowitz. “Restricted eating and chronic pain are among the most common problems children face, and yet parents are routinely left without real guidance, and sometimes given advice that makes things worse.”

Clinicians, he notes, agree that working with parents is essential, but consistently point to the absence of tools for doing it well. “By changing that, the impact of these projects will be felt in clinics, in homes, and in families around the world,” adds Lebowitz.

He also stresses the impact of philanthropy. “Philanthropic support is irreplaceable. It provides the speed to pursue bold new ideas and funds the work that becomes the evidence base for everything that follows. In mental health—an area historically shaped by stigma—private generosity can fill gaps and signal priorities. This gift is a perfect example. It signals that children’s mental health is worth fighting for.”

Asked what she would like her and Dmitri’s legacy to be, Daria says, “At this stage, we’re not thinking about legacy. We try to stay humble and grounded, focusing instead on acting with urgency, learning as we go, and being open to making mistakes.”

“Our hope is simply that our work becomes a meaningful contribution to the fields we care about, and that it helps support progress in a way that truly benefits people.”