Jonathan Metzl

Jonathan M. Metzl M.D., Ph.D. is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the Director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  He also serves as Research Director for Safe Tennessee, a nonpartisan gun-violence-prevention initiative in the U.S. South.  Dr. Metzl received his MD from the University of Missouri, MA in humanities/poetics and Psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan.  Among other awards, his work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Prize, the Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship from the American Psychiatric Association, and the Missouri Library Association Book Prize.  He has written extensively for scholarly and popular publications, and is the author of four books: Dying of Whiteness (Basic, 2019), The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease (Beacon, 2010), Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs (Duke, 2005), and Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (NYU, 2010), as well as over 150 academic articles.  Dr. Metzl is a go-to contact for national media on questions relating to mental illness and mass shootings.  In addition to long-running commentary on MSNBC, he has discussed gun policy, mental illness, and U.S. racial politics on over 700 segments on outlets as diverse as FOX, Christian ministry television, Morning Joe, C-SPAN, CNN, AM Joy, PBS’s Amanpour & Co, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and TYT, and writes opinion pieces for The New York Times, The Washington Post, VICE, Politico, and others. For speaking inquiries please contact: https://www.thelavinagency.com/speakers/jonathan-metzl.