RANE Podcast: A Psychiatrist’s View of the Mental Health Industry
I’m Roger Baker, executive director of the Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics at RAIN, a global center of excellence for geopolitical intelligence and analysis. Learn how you can put geopolitics to work for your organization at rainetwork.com. [Music] Hello and welcome to the Rain podcast series. In this episode, Reigns founder David Lawrence sits down with Dr. Jesse Gold, the chief wellness officer for the University of Tennessee and associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Dr. Gold works clinically as an outpatient psychiatrist and focuses her work on students, faculty, and healthcare workers. She’s spoken at major national and international meetings across diverse settings from academic institutions to hospital systems to the entertainment industry. She has written numerous academic publications in JAMAMA, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and elsewhere has been named as one of the top 14 chief wellness officers to get to know by the Becker Hospital Review. Dr. Gold recently published her first book titled How Do You Feel? One doctor’s search for humanity in medicine. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Yale School of Medicine and serving as chief resident in adult psychiatry at Stanford University, Dr. Gold brings a wealth of knowledge and many contributions in mental health and psychiatry to the public sphere. We hope you enjoy this episode. Jesse, uh first off, thank you very very much for uh taking time away from your busy schedule at the University of Tennessee and obviously um having just authored a wonderful book uh to spend some time with us and share with us um a bit about your background, what you’re doing now, some of the insights and um welcome and I have to say uh congratulations on your most recent book. Oh, thank you so much. I’m honored to be here. Truly. Okay. And we will uh obviously we’ll send some links on the book, but your many articles and uh your writings in Psychology Today, etc. Um let me I I know you’re innately humble um and but you don’t have anything really to be humble about. Uh, I thought it’d be helpful for the audience just to know a bit um about not only your background but what I’ll refer to as the continuum of the work that you’re doing uh and sort of how you got to the University of Tennessee overseeing their their wellness efforts on behalf of uh the students and the broader you know body of the university. Well, I am a psychiatrist by training. I primarily see healthcare workers and college students. I’m currently in Memphis, Tennessee, and I work at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. The other hat I wear is chief wellness officer for the University of Tennessee system, which is all five schools and campuses under the University of Tennessee umbrella all throughout the state, which is about 62,000 students. Um, I got into this, I guess role, but even just career for lots of reasons. One being I really liked people’s stories and I was an anthropology major at University of Pennsylvania undergrad and also got a master’s in anthropology and I studied premed as a culture for my thesis and that really made me even more interested in how we train people in healthcare, how we end up with the people who might have been great doctors not going through with it. How we lose our feelings and emotions in healthcare and where that comes from. and that was only strengthened by some research and and things I was interested in in in med school at Yale and then residency at Stanford. Um my dad is also a psychiatrist so there’s some of that though I would say I probably was trying not to be a psychiatrist cuz he’s a psychiatrist. So I you know as motivating as it is to grow up in a household that values medicine and science and psychiatry I wouldn’t say that it was maybe the primary reason I went into it. Um, I also really started writing as a way of processing pretty early, but I never did journalism or anything like that in high school or college, but it just became something I really turned to to deal with things. And that led to writing more and more, particularly over residency for popular press places, and then led to the book that came out in October. Okay, great. And uh, here’s what omission you were at WashU as well. Oh, yes. Sorry. I worked at WashU for five years. I probably just skipped so I didn’t bore people with how many things I’ve been up to. But at WashU, I was the psychiatrist at the college campus for a while and then also during the pandemic in particular, uh took on a leadership role called direct uh director of uh wellness engagement and outreach and ended up seeing a lot of the healthcare workers and their dependents throughout the pandemic and then also doing a lot of like sort of this systems work on wellness more broadly for the faculty and staff there. So I was particularly u intrigued and I’ll I’ll do the caveat that uh I I do know Jesse’s father uh very well for a number of years. Um and uh even I think predates your birth Jesse uh without dating my myself. Um and her dad Markle is uh a leading psychiatrist who specializes in among other things um addiction, substance use disorders and has been a real thought leader uh in that field. Uh what’s interesting in particular Jesse was your reference to uh your decision to write and to share experiences your interest in stories and you use the word as a means of processing. Uh there are many people who have careers and they go through things, they learn things etc. Uh what has at least in my mind been very remarkable about your still young career is uh the amount of sharing that you have done considering um your insights, perspectives and many of which uh reflect a very introspective practitioner of medicine. And so maybe we can get into a little bit of that um in terms of the decision to write and what you have been writing about. uh because there is a continuum here at least as I perceive it. Yeah. I mean I think the very first piece that I wrote that I really knew the power of writing for me like a public piece that wasn’t just something I wrote in a journal to deal with medical school. Um was a piece about you know the headline would be I was tricked into doing cardiac massage on a patient who was already dead. Um, it was something that I realized in the middle of the case when I got called in as a med student to help. Um, you know, I was really thinking I was helping to save a person’s life, but also had no skills to do so. Cardiac massage is literally pumping the heart with your hands. And I got called in very much like it was still the trauma and everything. And then it was pretty clear at the end based on the conversation with the trauma surgeon and the anesthesiologist that the patient had been dead long before they called me in. And it was more of an exercise in sort of teaching me how to deal with an emergency and doing the work without um actually having to be responsible for saving someone, I suppose. But that’s not what it felt like to me. And the other med student was also really jealous that he didn’t get to do it. And so I had a lot of feelings about it as a person who cares a lot about people, but also, you know, how we train people and why we train people that way. And I um went to my computer and wrote out some feelings and kind of the whole situation and sent it in an email to my med school mentor and she said, “First of all, this was a horrible situation. I’m sorry that happened.” And then second of all, basically if you take out a lot of the curse words, I think this would be really helpful for other people. And I hadn’t really thought about how my story, especially as a student, could be at all helpful for other people because you learn so much that an expert is somebody who’s been around a long time and has done a lot of things. And you kind of forget you can be an expert in your own experience at the time and what you learned and what you go through. And so I heard her and I and I edited the piece and it ended up being published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Um and it was the first time that I sort of saw that something that happened to me could be used to educate and help other people. And um you know I had talked to my dean when it happened and was kind of told, “Oh, that’s what that guy does. We’ve tried to have that conversation before like he’s not going to change.” And um when I wrote the piece, she my dean sent it out to all of the people at the med school on a listerve. So I feel like I also gave her another way to have the conversation that she hadn’t felt empowered to keep having either. And so um you know since that point and getting a lot of positive feedback too, which is rare in medicine, so it felt nice to get some positive feedback. So both being a place to have advocacy and also feel you know balance off the thoughts of what med school does and kind of makes you feel pretty inadequate most of the time I was motivated to write more and started writing more and you know that sort of use of my own experience and what I’m observing to inform education around mental health or to inform um talking about the system that’s at play in healthare care has been pretty central to the things that I’ve written about over time. Um, I wrote about my own medications, uh, mental health medications and my own stigma towards that. I’ve written about my burnout during COVID. And then a lot of that stuff then got translated to the book, which is part memoir, um, which is very vulnerable and different for me in how much it focused on me versus the information and the content. But I think it was important to normalize the story and the experience. It’s great. I don’t I don’t want to use cliched terms such as authentic and relatable and that type of thing. Uh but having heard you speak and having read you know a wide number of your articles the power of your words um is not simply coming from the insights you’re providing but the fact that you things that you share that you’ve actually lived through and experienced and I think that that has had a tremendous impact on you know the people who either have heard you or or read your writings. Um, and so maybe we’ll lead into the book that you wrote, which is a very much a um a personal book. Um, and uh, entitled, by the way, How Do You Feel? Uh, came out October. Do I remember that correctly? Yes. Just in October. In October of 2024. Uh, and subtitled One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine. And um it was a very interesting I’ll call it uh not not just story uh about your experiences but very much sort of revealing how you sort of unwrapped the lessons and what you took away from it and what you’ve been thinking about and obviously a a very important decision to share that with others. So maybe um you know I can just give you the four to talk about you know the book and the decision to write it and maybe most importantly what what you hope people will take away uh from reading it. Yeah I mean I think the book was a natural evolution for me in some capacity but I’ve never been a person who was like to-do list write a book and I think some people are like that where they have these goals and one of them is something like that. It was just never like a goal for me. It happened organically based on circumstance for me. Like I was a psychiatrist seeing mostly frontline workers in the middle of the pandemic and and I was listening to people and so many people said things like this is the only time I’ve told anyone this, but I’m also so alone in this and no one feels like I do. And I started thinking a lot about why that is and how the person that I just heard 20 minutes before, this person who said no one thinks like they do also thinks like that person. So why are we so silent about all of this stuff? And why are we not talking about it enough? Because it is so shared and obviously we’re all struggling in the middle of a pandemic, but it doesn’t have to be a pandemic to have these conversations. And so it kind of prompted me to be thinking more about how to have this conversation on a bigger level. Um, I also experienced my own burnout pretty badly in the middle of the pandemic, which made me recognize like despite being an expert in burnout, how hard it is to identify. And I think if it’s hard for me, it’s probably hard for everybody because I swim in the material so so much and so often. And so, you know, both my experience and and the desire to sort of connect the dots for some of my patients and and make them feel a bit bit less alone led to me wanting to write the book. Um, you know, it’s part memoir, part patient narrative. All of the patients are healthcare workers or healthcare worker adjacent, meaning there’s a college student who’s premed. And it really looks at all of the challenges taking care of yourself when you take care of other people. And you know, I think while it’s written from a perspective of a psychiatrist who sees healthcare workers, it’s not only for people in healthcare. So many of us put other people before ourselves in our careers or in our lives or our caregivers to children, our family members. And a lot of the same things I think are true healthcare is just this specific culture that teaches things this specific way. But so many of us experience a lot of the same themes. And you know, it’s not a self-help book, but there are elements of that because you can see me go through my own therapy and stuff that my therapist told me that I found helpful or things that I’ve said to patients and what what they found helpful. And so, you can definitely take pearls and things from that. But I would think what would most be my purpose for writing it and hope for the book would be that people felt seen and understood in a way they didn’t before. and maybe they even understood their doctors more than they did before or their nurses more than they did before and um you know found solace in that and felt less alone. That would be the point I think of why I chose to write on like such a bigger stage about it. And just in terms um because again you’ve highlighted some themes about people feeling that what they’re dealing with is is is very much just a personal thing that no one else necessarily feels and and and you know there’s I guess a compounding effect to that. But in in in terms of of the book, um is it your hope that you know people will sort of understand uh number one uh a little bit better about you know if if a leading psychiatrist can experience these things and go through these things then I’m not alone. Is it perhaps also a plea to the health care system to rethink um sort of how they approach um the issues of how is everybody doing. Yeah. I mean, I think the all like on the sort of one-on-one level, the hope would be to help the person reading it, right? But then you would hope that the person reading it might take that back to their institution, have conversations, share it, share it with people they’ve had trouble having these conversations with, and it would ideally spark change. In that sense, I think a lot of the issues that I focus on are about the culture of healthcare and our culture around feelings and emotions and asking for help. And you know, there are so many problems in healthcare that contribute to people’s mental state, you know, systems ones are big, you know, like insurance companies or how we’re reimbursed for our work or how much of our work is spent documenting. All of those things are true and valid and need people to look at them and find ways to make that better. But on the like same token, like people are so much experiencing all of these things alone and how it impacts them and their space. And I I think that there’s this bit of people who are choosing not to get help because they think they’re not supposed to or they’re not supposed to have feelings in medicine or they’re not supposed to be affected by their job because somehow that makes it about them. And those people like we have the ability to change that. Like that’s something we can control. I think a lot of the things in healthcare are big big systems that feel a bit out of control and like somebody like in a position like mine can work to fix it but the things that we can fix on a dayto-day that would make a big difference for the workplace are these like the way we treat each other and the way we treat ourselves and it was interesting uh I’m not trying to merge the two events u or or the title for that matter but it was earlier in 2024 that um Elmo, the Sesame Street figure, sort of opened up, I’ll call uh an unexpected Pandora’s box by asking a very simple question. I think it was how is everybody feeling or how is everybody doing? And it was a puppet, guys. Okay, it was a puppet. and and this whole um the response on you know social media from all age groups etc. And of course, your your book is, you know, appropriately entitled, “How do you feel?” And I just sort of I felt that there was u okay there’s the Sesame Street character asking the question and there’s your book which is also asking the question but for a very specific purpose and sharing you know a lot of what you have personally and and I’ll use the word poignantly have have gone through and I sort of felt that there were within 2024 there were two bookends there was wonderful book. And then there was the fact that a Sesame Street puppet opened up, you know, opened up a dialogue. Yeah. An unexpected dialogue. You know, I think that the person whoever runs the social media for Elmo did not think that was going to lead to where it did. But I was really proud of Sesame Street for what they did with that because they actually had Elmo go on TV and Elmo’s dad sometimes and they talked about really how, you know, asking the question can lead to answers you don’t expect and you don’t know what other people are dealing with. And Elmo was just trying to ask a question and ask for help and, you know, ask, you know, be there for people and wasn’t necessarily expecting what he got in return. And I think it was a really powerful way to um educate the community around those issues as a result of something that maybe was unexpected for them. But I I think very much like the simple question sometimes we just say okay and fine because we think we’re supposed to ask the question and we’re supposed to blow it off and we’re supposed to keep it um you know moving forward especially in the workplace. But most of us aren’t okay or fine most of the time, you know. And so I think learning to be able to even answer that honestly or listen to it honestly is an important skill that all of us should have. Yeah. So the way I thought about it and I also thought about your book Jesse is, you know, uh sometimes this this whole area can feel overly complex and complicated, but as you just alluded to, uh sometimes the simple act of asking a question or a simple act of kindness or recognizing that you’re not alone can make a very material difference in the conversation. and in how people are approaching the problems in their lives. And I I took that, you know, to be in part hopefully I didn’t misinterpret one of the one of the themes of of why you were writing the book that you wrote. Yeah. I mean, I think in a culture where you’re taught not to even address feelings and not to have feelings and that a person would be best at the job if they don’t. I think even asking the question and learning to ask the question to yourself is a good start. And I think that’s part of it too is like I felt like I never asked myself that question. I spent a lot of time asking other people and my therapist said, “Have you ever asked yourself?” And I said, “What a silly question.” Like why would I ask myself that? Like I’m going to be like, “Hey, Jesse, how are you?” And she’s like, “Yes, exactly.” I think I if I’m not doing it, I’d imagine a lot of folks that do this work or, you know, our caregivers or parents or teachers or social workers are having this in their day-to-day where they’re not recognizing themselves in the equation and it is important that we do because really no one else will. You know, our colleagues need to and should be supporting us too, but I think we have to support ourselves too and especially in a workplace. So, just building on that a little bit and I don’t want to get too far astray with with Elmo, but uh there were actually there were two parts to the question. Uh one was Elmo is just checking in and then the question how is everybody doing? But just the u communication of that someone was checking in and the response on social media uh someone referred to it I think as trauma dumping that that people just began to unload on all the things that they were dealing with and um and it was um it it was a puppet that asked the question Jesse right. Yeah. And it was just it’s just an interesting phenomenon. just um something from my own household. Um having had two kids who are now young adults, it was interesting. They’d come home from school and my wife could tell that, you know, something happened in school that was bothering them and she would ask in a very gentle way and they wouldn’t, you know, um they really wouldn’t open up. But, you know, we had a dog and and my wife would pretend the dog was asking and they would start a conversation with the dog, okay? and and open up on this and I just I’m it’s just there seems to be and and maybe this is one of the points you know within the healthcare system um not connecting with people okay not people not having a platform where somebody is just checking in where they feel comfortable speaking about what’s happening um or feel there’s any purpose to it for that matter but yet you know your book came out in October. Elmo asked the question in in January. And I’m just curious because you’re working um at the university level as you say 60,000, you know, people, you have students, you have health care professionals, you have a as diverse a population as I can imagine exists. How do how do you think about breaking down the barriers and and knowing sort of what people are feeling and and for people to know about the resources that you’re offering? Yeah. I mean, I think the reason why the puppet part matters is I think there’s safety and the fact that it’s a puppet. I think there’s also this like nostalgic element of Elmo that feels safe as a safe listener to people. And I think that as a group, as a culture, in a campus, in a broader system, as leadership, like you need to learn to become a safe place for people. So I think some of that is that a lot of people who are in leadership never learned this stuff. I happen to have learned this stuff because of my training in psychiatry, but a lot of people are research experts or leadership experts or higher education experts. And so there’s a lot of growth that can happen simply by preparing leaders and faculty and staff to be able to have these conversations with their employees, with their students. I I think that it leads to faculty and staff distress to not be able to say the right things or manage this in a way that feels safe to them. And they’re not supposed to be someone’s therapist, but oftentimes they are the first line of defense. So part of culture change is education and conversation and and preparing people with the right skills so they feel able to address the things that they’re dealing with in their day-to-day. Um part of it is making sure that people understand and know what resources exist, but also addressing the gaps where they occur. So one of the things I learned in my last job, especially with employees and staff, was like we had all these resources, but nobody could name them. And you’re like, why do we pay for all of this stuff if they don’t know what they are? They don’t know how to access them. They don’t know when to access them. Things like the employee access plan where you would get free mental health, people would have this very negative connotation about, but like or think it was really related to the employer, but it was often quite separate and also people did have good experiences when they actually used it. So, you know, breaking down some of the misconceptions, but also making sure people really understand what you have and what you’re offering and at the same time sort of making sure you’re listening and offering what they need is is relevant as a a leader. Um, you know, I think I I think a lot about peer support too on college campuses, just like I would say preparing faculty and staff to better feel like they can help in the classroom or coaches to help on the field um to prepare students better um in dealing with this for themselves and other people. It it is as simple as really understanding signs and symptoms, understanding how to have these conversations, knowing when it’s too much for you and you need to get them to the right place and knowing what the right place is. Like that stuff all sounds so silly and simple, but it really makes a huge difference. Like if every single person on a campus felt comfortable identifying signs and symptoms and referring to the right place at the right time, we would have a lot of people getting places far earlier than they are. And I think we would have these conversations more with each other because we would feel like people knew how to have them. You know, I think I I’m a big fan of vulnerability, not just in myself, but in other people. But I think it’s scary as a word. I think it’s scary in a lot of our cultures, especially in our workplace cultures. But I don’t mean that everybody needs to be like, “Hi, I’m Jesse. I have uh burnout at times. I see a therapist. I go I take mental health medication sometimes.” you know, like I don’t expect everybody to do what I do, but I like we need some people to, but what I mean by vulnerability is really like saying some of the quiet stuff out loud. Like it’s really hard to balance your email inbox all the time and sometimes it makes me frustrated or I went home and I had a lot of stuff going on with my family and it’s hard to be here at work today as a result. like whatever it is, some of these things that are so obvious, like we’ve somehow decided is a secret or like a fight club of the workplace. And I don’t think that, you know, keeping everything in the fight club is the right way of going about it. I really think that saying some of the quiet stuff out loud will make people feel safer and make people feel like you’re in Elmo and you could be talked to earlier and maybe people wouldn’t wait until work was affected or life was affected or they were so so sick that they had to see someone like me. Of course, people will still need to see someone like me and there will be a population that does, but probably not everybody who ends up in my office needed to get to the point that they ended up in my office. And so how do we make sure that we’re getting to people sooner is a big part of a culture of caring too. So Jesse, you actually anticipated my next question which is you know basically um there’s valuable insights here. How how do we scale those things inside whether they’re schools or businesses or government offices etc. And at least some of the themes I’m taking away is there needs first of all people need to know those resources exist. Okay? if they don’t know not there uh they also have to feel that they can use these resources in a safe way. I I don’t mean to translate but that you know the the ability to have that conversation and not to feel it’s going to impact um you know your standing within whatever community or business or school that you’re in. uh the ability to not only have safe conversations but you know the ability to be honest and then what you know the takeaway and and you know perhaps you know Elmo as a vehicle um no one else was asking nobody felt threatened by Elmo even if they were answering in social media um and um the ability to sort of perhaps and this is where I’m going to draw from your book the ability to speak to someone who’s been there before, uh, who actually knows what it is that you’re going through. And I’m uh I’m very mindful through, you know, some of the the learning that I’ve been able to do through your dad, Mark Gold, uh about the importance of some of these support communities for people who are struggling with substance use disorders and and why it’s important for them to be speaking to other people who have gone through it and hopefully successfully. uh so uh they can actually share what they’ve gone through and also share the insights of what’s been helpful, what hasn’t been. But there there numerous instances where mentors make a difference. People who may have been caught up in a in the criminal justice system who take on mentees who are young people who are, you know, just starting to get into trouble. Uh so the authenticity if I can use that word of uh of the support that’s being provided and what I’m also hearing from you is not everybody has to be a a psychiatrist um within this network of support with people. Okay. That there’s a lot that can be gained and shared um even with people who are not uh clinically credentialed. Yeah. And most people don’t want to go to a psychiatrist. Like it’s just and stigma is obviously one thing, but it’s also like I don’t need to. It’s expensive. Not everyone needs to get there. Not all feelings are pathologic. Not all things need to get to the point that they’re diagnostic and interfering with your life. And so understanding some of like, you know, your own warning signs or a peer’s warning signs and being able to notice something earlier. I mean, coping skills work if you use them at the right time. So, if you’re 10 out of 10 burnt out and someone told you to do yoga, you’d probably want to punch them in the face. But if like you were three out of 10, it might sound like a good idea because it actually would help. So, also recognizing that like there are different times and places for different coping skills for those reasons. like there are ways to help yourself and to help others at at earlier times and and that’s important, but you have to sort of be armed with information to do that. And so, you know, I like things like mental health first aid for those that reason. I like things like peer support training and peer support programs for that reason because I do think that the primary level of support is going to be not clinicians. It’s going to be friends. It’s going to be coaches. It’s going to be teachers. It’s going to be administrators and those people aren’t trained to do what I do. Shouldn’t have to be trained to do what I do, but should be trained enough that they feel comfortable hearing the information, being validating and empathetic, and then getting them to the right place, right? And so all of that is part of it, too, is like how do we educate a community to be able to deal with that stuff? And there are formal trainings. There are formal things you could have as a company or a workplace that can do some of that. But I do think it’s necessary. And I would also say as a company like there’s no one-sizefits-all to this, right? So I could have come into my job and said when I was at WashU, this is what worked like this is what we’re going to do here or this is what the literature says. This is what I’m going to do here. But I’ve been very mindful to take my time. So to like collect information about uh the data that we have to collect information about what we’re doing on all the campuses, what resources we have, what feedback we have, what works, what doesn’t work, what the cultures are like on all the campuses before I like do the the shiny object thing, right? Like there’s a desire to like buy an app or whatever for your employees and be like, “We did something. Look, we care about your mental health.” But um that’s not always the solution. Sometimes the solution is something simple like this that we’re talking about that could change culture. It’s it sounds silly, but it can make a big difference. Sometimes the answer is not at all the direction you were going in. Sometimes it’s a systems problem that if you just found a way to give people a little bit more time to write notes or something, they would be happier in the workplace. You know, control is a big thing in the workplace, too. How do you give people more control back? So some of these things that I mean are not going to completely shake a workplace to try to implement are probably the things that you will see be beneficial and help people feel more valued in the workplace, want to stay in the workplace, um want to stay in school, want to go to that school, same things apply. And so, you know, just be mindful that just because you read it doesn’t mean that’s the thing you should do. and that you should start by getting feedback, talking to people, understanding what you have, understanding what you know, understanding where the gaps are, and really doing a good needs assessment. And though it takes time, part of what you could do is be transparent about what you’re doing. Because I think a lot of times too, like companies are doing something and leaders are doing something, but they just don’t tell anybody. And so people think like, well, I keep saying this place is super unhealthy. No one cares. And I think if what you do care but you’re working on it and it takes time, you have to communicate that too. And that’s part of sort of the feedback structure of a good healthy system. Okay. I’m not making a political commentary here, but there’s a lot going on in Washington, Jesse, uh today that might benefit from um the study first uh you know, and and and then address the problem. Yeah, I I benefit in those situations from the serenity prayer. So, I I sort of accept the things I cannot change and have the courage to know the difference as much as I can. It makes it it can be very helpful in times of uncertainty. Okay. Well, a a a prayer that was cited in a incredible speech by Robert Kennedy many years ago and I believe is uh part of um Alcoholics Anonymous and their uh program. In the just few minutes we have left um you you very much touched upon this notion one size does not fit all every organization is different. Uh you’re again you’re dealing with a very diverse population and you know when you have people who might be aging out of their job and approaching retirement or people who may have hit the wall in their career uh the so-called midlife crisis to students who are for the first time away from home and on their own. uh possibly getting involved for the first time in uh in in a relationship, being exposed to alcohol, drugs, you know, um we’ll quote the freedoms of the campus. Um different issues for different populations uh at different moments of their life. Uh and you’ve referenced a couple of times already the, you know, what it was like to go through the pandemic and everything that that imposed upon people. Um just in a maybe the couple minutes we have left um what’s going on out there Jesse that you are thinking about and that might be the next topic of conversation as you’re thinking about how better to serve people and how the medical and health care profession can be more responsive. Yeah. I mean I’m thinking about a lot of things. It’s a problem with my brain. And I think I have like a where’s Waldo brain for systems problems and once I see it I can’t stop seeing it. So it’s always been like that. But um you know in my system that I work in it’s a mix of undergraduate and graduate institutions. One whole graduate institution is a health science center which has its unique challenges I think um from everything from the way we do grants to the way the faculty structure is to the relationships with hospitals. It’s just very different to be um on a health science campus as opposed to a big undergraduate campus. But I think, you know, as different as all of the campuses are, a lot of them struggle with a lot of the same things. And so there’s like things that need to be done soon, like things that could harm people. And I think I’ve been focusing a lot on Narcan and opiate uh education and prevention because I think um if somebody on a campus um overdosed and didn’t have access to it, we wouldn’t want that to happen on our campus and we also want our campus to be a safe place for people in recovery. And that communicate like that community is significantly growing. You can see that in the data by um college campuses. You can see that in how many people are choosing not to drink as much on college campuses too. And so, you know, making that a priority has been something I’ve been trying to do more quickly just because it feels more urgent, but at the same time, really trying to be mindful about the other things that I’m doing. So, I’ve been collecting all of the information that I can. Um, data wise, part of what I’m going to be doing is building like a good data strategy, like survey strategy for all of the campuses so we can better compare. I think that’s not at all sexy to people, but it’s super needed because otherwise you’re just making decisions that you think are the right decisions and you’re also not noticing the patterns across like a very big system. And so I think data collection and applying like evidence base as much as possible is really important in these roles and I don’t think it always happens. Um, you know, I think I I’m trying to figure out where different things fit in that are in what I’ve been talking about, like what schools have successful peer support networks and feel like those are good. Does that make sense to have everywhere? How does faculty and staff fit in? Um, so my charge is primarily students, but um, faculty and staff were my primary charge in my last job and I can’t stop thinking about them. I’m a faculty member. Everything affects them substantially, too. So making sure um some of my solutions integrate faculty and staff or that the solutions feel more widely applicable and maybe somebody can take that on as a different role in the future I think is important too. So um you know the cool thing about having a role like mine or thinking about having a role like mine is there’s someone in the room thinking about these things at all times like you know everybody has their own reasons for being in that room or or or their own things that they’re thinking about or caring about. oftentimes recruitment, retention and finances are big up there in all systems, in all workplaces, in all higher ed institutions. And so my my job becomes like how does that policy re relate to wellness and then relate backwards to recruitment, retention, and finances, right? And so you can make that argument all the time. And I think it’s important that there’s someone that can and that you’re in those rooms recognizing how tedious certain policies might be on a person, how um you might need to think about the mental health of people when you’re rolling out something or writing an email or whatever it is. And so I think trying to make sure that this role is something that exists other places, but if not, that somebody’s thinking about that in the room is is really important, too. So Jesse, I want to thank you for um the continued conversation. I want to congratulate you on your book and commend it um to people. uh there were a lot of terms that were used uh about transparency and I thought you know certainly that applies to the book and uh I always think of u you know a seminal question when I’m reading something why why is the writer writing this and um I think anyone who picks up Jesse’s book will immediately understand the value of it um wish you nothing but good luck and and impact at the University of Tennessee and and what’s particularly important is um your continued writing because I think that’s how your you know how your insights perspectives have scaled uh so effectively. So I look forward to the continued conversation with you and uh again many many thanks for your valuable time today. Of course. Thanks for having me. And I hope that anybody who feels inspired to either care about someone else or care about themselves as a result does and goes and does that just ask themselves how they’re doing and sit with it and not judge themsel for whatever feeling they have as a result. Okay, that’s a great sign off, but I I I will insist on the last word since I attended your uh basically your a a book signing that you had in New York uh in October and I witnessed um the number of people, many of whom were uh were young, who not only went over to you for your book and had read your book, but the number of hugs that you received, Jesse, and the number of hugs that you gave. So maybe Sesame Street has to think about creating a a Jesse puppet to to to work with Elmo on this. But it was it was really very touching and very inspiring. So I’ll I’ll just mention that in closing. Thank you. Okay, Jesse. Thanks again. [Music] Thanks for listening. Visit the link in the episode description to check out Dr. Jesse Gold’s full bio and her new book, How Do You Feel? One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine. Want more Rain content? Become a member of our community today by visiting rainetwork.com. That’s ranetwork.com.
Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-7hzer-191e28c
In this episode of RANE Insights, Founder of RANE David Lawrence sits down with Dr. Jessi Gold, MD, MS, a nationally recognized psychiatrist, writer, and speaker to discuss her insights into the field of mental health.
Dr. Jessi Gold, MD, MS, is a nationally recognized psychiatrist, writer, and speaker specializing in mental health care for students, faculty, and healthcare professionals. As the inaugural 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), she brings a unique blend of clinical insight and leadership to her work.
RANE is a global risk intelligence company that delivers risk and security professionals access to critical insights, analysis and support to ensure business continuity and resilience for our clients. For more information about RANE’s risk management solutions, visit www.ranenetwork.com.