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Department OfMedicine, Health, and Society

Jonathan M. Metzl

Director, Department of Medicine, Health, and Society
Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health, and Society; Professor of Psychiatry

Jonathan Metzl 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 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 University of Michigan. Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award, the 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship, and a 2008 Guggenheim fellowship, Dr. Metzl has written extensively for medical, psychiatric, and popular publications about some of the most urgent hot-button issues facing America and the world. His books include The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland.

Specializations

  • Psychiatry
  • Race and Health
  • History of Mental Health
  • Gender
  • Politics

Representative Publications

Current Projects

**History of medical boundary violations

**Structural Competency

**RWJ men and masculinity project

**Guns and mental illness

Representative publications

Metzl, JM. “Mainstream Anxieties about Race in Antipsychotic Drug Ads.” American Medical Association Journal of Ethics 2012, 14 (6):494-502.

Metzl, JM.. “Structural Competency.” American Quarterly 2012, 64 (2): 213-18.

Metzl, JM and MacLeish, K. “Triggering the Debate: Faulty Associations Between Violence and Mental Illness Underlie U.S. Gun Control Efforts.” Risk and Regulation.

Metzl, JM. “Structural Health, and the Politics of African American Masculinity.” American Journal of Men’s Health [forthcoming].

Metzl, JM and Hansen, HH. “Structural Competency: theorizing a new medical engagement with stigma and inequality.” Social Science & Medicine [forthcoming].

MEDIA

Commentator, MSNBC, Melissa Harris Perry Show. Recent appearances include,

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/51114780#51114780

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/51124323#51124323

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/51114838#51114838

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/51124049#51124049

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/46419672%20-%2046843434#46419672

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/46419672%20-%2046843621#46419672

**http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/vp/46419672%20-%2046843779#46419672

Film Critic, The Lancet. . Recent reviews include,

**A Bitter Pill: Review of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects (Metzl JM, 2013, 381 (9873): 1174:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60786-2/fulltext

Columnist, NBC.COM. Recent articles include,

*Let’s talk about guns, but stop stereotyping the mentally ill (msnbc.com):

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/24/lets-talk-about-guns-but-stop-stereotyping-the-mentally-ill/

*The NRA and race (the grio.com):

http://thegrio.com/2013/03/06/colion-noir-the-nras-urban-gun-enthusiast-is-off-target/#51050433

Metzl, JM. “Sequester This! The Perils of Masculinity and the Truth About Sex.” Public Books, April, 2013: http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction/sequester-this-the-perils-of-masculinity-and-the-truth-about-sex

NPR: States of Mind—Mental Illness in America, May 2013: http://backstoryradio.org/shows/states-of-mind/