Dr. Jessi Gold is 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).
Dr. Gold works clinically as an outpatient psychiatrist and focuses her work on students, faculty, and healthcare workers.
She has spoken at major national and international meetings across diverse settings, from academic institutions to hospital systems to the entertainment industry. She has written research and academic publications in JAMA, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and elsewhere and has been identified by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the ‘Top 14 Chief Wellness Officers to Get to Know | 2024′.
She may be best known, however, for her general audience original publications that teach about mental health topics and decrease stigma that can be found in, among others, the Washington Post, New York Times, Forbes, SELF, and InStyle, as well as her expert media appearances in print, television, radio, and podcasts, and her large social media presence.
She has also released her first book. HOW DO YOU FEEL?: One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine, with Simon Element – available now.
Dr. Gold is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a B.A. and M.S. in Anthropology, in addition to being a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa. She also completed her medical degree at the Yale School of Medicine and her residency training in Adult Psychiatry at Stanford University, where she served as chief resident from 2017-2018. She has received numerous awards and accolades for her contributions in mental health and psychiatry, including the Dean’s Impact Award for her work during the COVID-19 pandemic in her previous hospital system, Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine.
Dr. Gold is considered to be an internationally recognized expert on, among other things:
- Workplace mental health, wellness, and burnout, particularly among healthcare workers, journalists, and people in the entertainment industry
- College mental health
- Mental health advocacy using writing for the popular press and other forms of media, including social media
- The overlap between pop culture and mental health, including celebrity mental health and self-disclosure
- Using vulnerability and storytelling (including her own) to change culture and normalize help seeking
- Telling your own mental health story, especially for popular figures and celebrities
- Taking care of ourselves while taking care of others and moral injury
- Coping strategies for stress, burnout, and other mental health conditions
- Social media and mental health
- Reporting on mental health in journalism, including suicide safety guidelines
She is available to speak about these and other adjacent mental health topics, participate in interviews for news outlets in all forms of media, and to consult for publishing and media on mental health topics and storytelling.
To contact Dr. Gold for an interview, to consult with the media, or for a speaking engagement, click here.
