An excerpt from Physicians With Lived Experience: How Their Stories Offer Clinical Guidance (APA Publishing, 2025).
“Here is the truth: I have been on a stable dose of Wellbutrin (Bupropion) for thirteen years, and despite being quite a public advocate about self-disclosure and mental health, I have never once said that out loud. If you have ever read anything I’ve written before this may seem surprising because I am really open about my own mental health. But, if you look closely, I’ve never mentioned having seen a psychiatrist myself or taking medication. It is a boundary I put up, even though it wasn’t always a conscious one. Until now.”
Dr. Jessi Gold is chief wellness officer for the University of Tennessee (UT) System and an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). Specializing in college mental health and burnout in health professionals, she is also a prolific writer, commentator, social media person, and sought-after plenary speaker. She is known for her warmth and authenticity and this is why her candid words in the short paragraph above are so important. They illustrate how layered the process of self-disclosure can be for psychiatrists and how the fact of taking medication for depression (or any other psychiatric illness) colors the narrative of sharing for many. She continued:
“No matter how many times I’ve had conversations about why it isn’t weak, a failure, or shameful to need medication for your mental health, and wholeheartedly believe every word I have said, it turns out it didn’t protect me from internalizing the same negative beliefs about taking psychiatric medication myself… As it turns out, underneath my psychiatrist exterior, I believed for myself, if people knew I took medication, they’d think I was sicker than I was… in my head, I associated medication with worsened illness. And if people thought I was worse off, needing more than ‘just therapy’ to get better, then my colleagues or patients might think that perhaps I would be less good at being a doctor.” (Gold 2021)
Like the lived experience narratives shared by so many other physicians, Dr. Gold’s story is a gift to the reader. Social media reaches a tremendous number of individuals, many of whom might identify with the partial sharing of seeing a therapist, but like her were tight-lipped about taking psychiatric medication. When mental health professionals share an internal struggle, the act is so normalizing and comforting for their patients and others in their orbit. I am thinking of the many medical students and residents whom she teaches and what a refreshing role model she must be. Internalized stigma is ever-present in many psychiatric academic and clinical faculty who live with a well-treated mental illness. Those who do share their stories are in the minority.
I spoke with Dr. Gold over Zoom on March 30, 2023, about her decision to go public with her story. An uber-extrovert is how she describes herself, but the subject of mental health or being in therapy was not common when she was a premed undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. That was when she began to develop symptoms of depression and started treatment at home over the summer. During residency it was different as psychiatry residents began therapy and talked about it in their process groups. She felt the isolation of the pandemic and this did not feel good. She then began to get more active on social media and blended her personal and professional experiences more. This activity eased her into commenting on people’s stories and opening up about her own. She discussed therapy from both a personal and professional perspective. “What I had (burnout) and what I was writing about seemed to help a lot of doctors and nurses feel heard and understood, and the mutuality was critical.”
She elaborated as follows:
“I wanted to respond to those who put their struggling out there, that there’re not just left with no responses, but that someone who is a mental health clinician also struggles and that’s important for them to know. I became more open about day-to-day things on social media during the pandemic. And if my patients read it, then that’s okay, because it was something I could offer, not being on the front lines. I can make them understand that this is a normal reaction, and not to feel bad about it… Telling your story is still scary, you’re vulnerable and may fear being rejected, but it is still worth it, if you are ready and want to share.”
She also wrote pieces about Black doctors and racism, and therapist burnout during the pandemic. “Storytelling for me is how we change, how we talk to each other.” I asked Dr. Gold about the reaction of others to her shared lived experience. Apart from a few trolls, her social media reactions have been affirming, engaging, and inspiring. Her friends and family have been uniformly supportive. I inquired about people at work, particularly the impact of her openness about taking psychiatric medication among her medical associates, especially her psychiatry colleagues. She responded:
“It’s very mixed. From a psychoanalytic perspective but also a forensic perspective, perhaps some people who know me may believe that there’s too much information out there about me. There’s an undercurrent not talked about regarding what I say (self-disclosure), and why, I wonder, do they think this is self-serving? That I get lots of positive comments on social media, like is it an ego boost or that I got my name in the New York Times. Yes, I have a website, but that’s about having a central place, for everything, to be put together, available and accessible for people to find and read or listen to podcasts. But I struggle with this because being self-serving couldn’t be further from the truth. That is not why I write or what I write about on social media. I write to join in a conversation or express an opinion or to learn from others. This is not another way to boost me as a brand.”
Michael F. Myers is a professor of clinical psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, where he previously served as vice-chair of education and director of training in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He is internationally recognized for his work on physician mental health, suicide prevention, ethics, and professional identity across the medical lifespan.
Dr. Myers is the author or co-author of ten books, including Physicians With Lived Experience: How Their Stories Offer Clinical Guidance (APA Publishing, 2025), Becoming a Doctors’ Doctor, Why Physicians Die by Suicide, and The Physician as Patient, Touched by Suicide, and The Handbook of Physician Health, as well as widely cited works on medical relationships, marriage, and divorce. He has published more than 150 articles on topics including suicide, stigma, boundary crossings, ethics in medical education, sexual assault, AIDS, gender issues in training and practice, and the treatment of medical students and physicians.
Dr. Myers has received multiple awards for excellence in teaching and has served on several medical journal editorial boards, including the Bellevue Literary Review, where he has been a board member since 2021. He is a recent past president of the New York City chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and lectures widely throughout North America and internationally. More information is available at michaelfmyers.com, as well as on LinkedIn and X @downstatedoctor.
