How One Doctor Crushed Stigma by Sharing His Depression Journey on Social Media
"Here's the truth: I'm depressed, I'm taking medication, and I'm proud of it."
Posting those words on social media in December 2021 came with significant risk for psychiatry resident physician and mental health advocate Dr. Jake Goodman. Publicly claiming his own struggles with depression and anxiety as a mental health professional risked others viewing him as unable to handle the pressure or demand of the medical field. But Dr. Goodman decided to challenge that misconception, opening up to his more than 1.3 million TikTok followers and his more than 300,000 Instagram followers about his own mental health journey.
For Mental Health Awareness Month, Dr. Goodman recently chatted with psychiatrist and Men's Health advisor Dr. Drew Ramsey on the Instagram Live show, Friday Sessions, about his decision to open up about his mental health journey.
"There is a culture of not talking about your mental health [in the medical field], and I've made it a mission of mine to really break that stigma and allow people to seek the lifesaving treatment that they should be able to seek," Goodman said during the talk.
Though that has long been Goodman's mission on social media, it became personal in the last year. Since October, Goodman has been coping with a major depressive episode that left him in "weeks after weeks after weeks of darkness." He first started noticing a deterioration in his mental health while navigating the notoriously competitive and, at times, toxic environment of medical school. Yet, even as a psychiatry professional, Goodman felt pressure to suppress his feelings.
"As I became more and more passionate about mental health, I looked at studies and saw one in four medical students experience depression in medical school," Goodman said. "In my mind, I thought it was like one in 4o or 50. I felt like I was alone [or] there were just a couple of other people."
Eventually, a friend and colleague brought up that Goodman may be depressed, which even he was compelled to reject at first. But upon reflecting on his feelings, the psychiatry resident found he had many of the common symptoms of depression. He booked an appointment with a therapist soon after, which he describes as humbling and scary.
"[Seeking treatment] has provided me with immense empathy for the person on the other side," Goodman said. "Because I'm the person on the other side too."
Eventually, Goodman started on medication for depression, which he joked was a "tough pill to swallow." But as he began getting his mental well-being in check, he realized he was constantly advocating for mental health at a distance on social media, careful to never implicate himself. So he drafted a social media post "outing" himself, a psychiatric medical professional, as depressed and proudly medicated.
"[It's] extremely risky. Most would advise me to never do that — and I did it on a massive platform," Goodman said, referring to his million-plus followers.
But, for him, the potential of helping others lead him to post the message that had been living in his drafts for three weeks.
That was in December 2021. Since then, Goodman has received countless thank you messages and praise for his transparency. Better yet, his mental health has improved immensely, showing others that there are beams of light in even the most immense darkness.
"If you're really going through it right now, this is not a permanent thing," Goodman said. "I promise you that. You will not feel the way you do forever. There is just no way."
Watch the full conversation here:
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