Spread the light with Dr Devika B

Nzinga Harrison, MD, is a board-certified physician with specialties in psychiatry and addiction medicine. She is also the Chief Medical Officer and cofounder of Eleanor Health, an innovative mental health and addiction treatment company. Dr. Harrison holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the Morehouse School of Medicine and sits on the Practice Management and Regulatory Affairs Committee for th...

Pooja Mehta serves with me on the National Board of Directors at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). She’s been a powerful mental health advocate since she was 19 and lives with anxiety with auditory hallucinations, depression, and lost her brother Raj to suicide in 2020.  Hear from her on: - How she centers being a South Asian woman in her advocacy  - What current suicide prevention e...

Ashanti Branch has over 20 years of experience in building healthy relationships in schools — he’s a pioneer in reforming education, youth mental health, and traditional masculinity. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Ever Forward Club , a non-profit organization that takes students who are disengaged and dropping out to 100% graduation rates, 90% college enrollment, and 0% incarcerat...

This month, in honor of the newly named Health Workforce Well-Being Day on March 18th, commemorating the day the President signed the Lorna Breen Act into law in 2022, I’m thrilled to feature conversations with three brilliant national leaders who are transforming health worker well-being: Corey Feist, JD, MBA , CEO and co-founder of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation , founded in 2020 to...

I loved this awesome conversation on optimizing well-being with my friend, Dr Jessi Gold. She is now the first Chief Wellness Officer for the University of Tennessee System, though this was recorded before that — and a psychiatrist with expertise in mental health for college students, healthcare workers, and in the entertainment industry. She shares wisdom on what it looks like to optimize well-be...

Welcome to Season 2 of Spread the light with Dr Devika B . Here, we know that stigma festers in the dark and it scatters in the light. And this season will take that even further. We’ll dive into the ways that stigma shows up in culture, in norms, in policies, and in institutions — and how we can disrupt and rewrite that. To kick us off: In this powerful interview with perinatal psychiatrists Dr N...

This episode features Amy Brinkley ’s incredible journey — and how she uses her personal experiences with substance use and mental illness recovery to drive national change and support others to sustain recovery, especially after incarceration. Amy Brinkley is a nationally recognized leader in mental health and substance use recovery. Motivated by personal recovery experience and the suicides of t...

Lara Burmeister, MBA, is a first-generation German-American who has spent most of her career working in roles to combat climate change. She lives with depression. Hear about what Lara challenged herself to do to get through her darkest moments, her well-time and red flag toolkits, how depression changed her, and how she rebuilt her identity in its wake. Trigger warning : In this interview, we talk...

Dr Ade Osinubi is a resident physician in emergency medicine, a documentary filmmaker, and photographer whose work focuses on telling the untold stories of minority populations. She recently created the documentary Black Motherhood Through the Lens, about four Black women's experiences with reproductive health in the US, recognized in Forbes and PBS. She has written for the Washington Post, T...

Justin Bullock, MD, MPH, is a fellow in Nephrology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr Bullock is a passionate medical educator and an identity safety researcher. He is outspoken about his lived experience as a gay, Black, bipolar physician. Dr Bullock's work and story have been featured in the New England Journal of Medicine, Vox, and Forbes, among other places. This conve...

Dr Jake Goodman is a psychiatry resident physician and global mental health activist with more than 2.1 million followers on social media. He is a two-time TEDx Speaker, member of the University of Georgia Alumni Association's 40 under 40, and a participant in the Healthcare Leaders in Social Media Roundtable Series for the White House. Dr Jake uses his platform to fight stigma and discrimina...

Dr Ahmed Hankir is a Lebanese-British-Irish psychiatrist with expertise by lived experience. He serves as the Lead for Public Engagement and Education at the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and Human Rights, Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham University, UK. Dr Hankir is passionate about empowering and dignifying people living with mental health condition...

Geo Custodio is a creative strategist, using both left and right brain thinking to help brands and corporations define their values and to build community. She has worked in tech, fashion, publishing and is currently a communications consultant in retail. She loves to paint, draw, and write. In her spare time, Geo is also Mom to seven dogs and two cats. Her gender identities are non-binary and tra...

Andy Dunn is an entrepreneur, author (of his memoir, Burn Rate), investor, and father. He co-founded the men's wear brand Bonobos and recently released his TED talk, Lessons from losing my mind: https://www.ted.com/talks/andy_dunn_lessons_from_losing_my_mind/c?language=en  Trigger warning: In this interview, we talk about suicidality, depression, psychosis, hypomania, and mania. SPREAD THE LI...

Emi Nietfeld is a journalist, mental health activist, and the author of Acceptance: A Memoir , a journey from foster care and homelessness to Harvard and Big Tech. As a journalist, she writes for places like The New York Times, The Atlantic , and Slate and is passionate about critiquing unrealistic expectations of “resilience” put on vulnerable youth. She lives in New York City with her family and...

This year, in honor of World Bipolar Day, I got some friends together to bust some commonly held myths about bipolar disorder.  Here are our truths: Myself, Dr Devika Bhushan, a pediatrician, public health leader, and equity and health changemaker: You can't tell from the outside who has bipolar disorder. Major General Gregg Martin, PhD, retired from US Army, grandparent, person with bipolar...

Brandon Staglin is President of One Mind, where he channels his deep experience in communications, advocacy, and his personal recovery from schizophrenia to drive brain health research, services, and media. Trigger warning: this episode mentions suicidality and psychosis. SPREAD THE LIGHT WITH DR DEVIKA B:  First-person accounts of living with mental illness that aim to dispel stigma and stereotyp...

Andrew Barr is a founding partner of GreyMatter, a mental health-focused venture capital firm. Previously, he advised a range of mental health startups and non-profits. Before his work in the mental field, he was a co-founder of Prefer, a Benchmark-backed startup and a venture capitalist at Institutional Venture Partners. He has lived experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Trigger warning:...