Jonathan Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health, and Society, Chair of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, and Professor of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University. In Health Science, he holds additional affiliate appointments in the Departments of Health Policy, African American and Diaspora Studies, and History. He earned a B.A. in English Literature and Biology and an M.D. from the University of Missouri in 1991, an M.A. in American Poetry/Liberal Arts from Stanford University in 1995, and a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 2001. He completed a medical internship and psychiatry residency at Stanford University Hospital from 1991 to 1995, followed by postdoctoral training as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and Fellow in Cross-Cultural Psychiatry at the University of Michigan from 1995 to 1999. Prior to Vanderbilt, where he joined in 2011 as Director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, Metzl served as Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, directing the Program in Culture, Health, and Medicine from 2003 to 2011.

Metzl's research specializations encompass race and health disparities, structural competency, the politics of mental illness and gun violence, gender and masculinity in health policy, and the cultural history of medicine. His influential books include Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland (Basic Books, 2019), The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease (Beacon Press, 2010), Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs (Duke University Press, 2003), and Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality? (NYU Press, 2010, co-edited). Key articles feature Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms (American Journal of Public Health, 2015) and Structural Competency: Theorizing a New Medical Engagement with Stigma and Inequality (Social Science & Medicine, 2014). He has received the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award, 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship, 2020 Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Award for Research, and 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. Metzl contributes editorially as co-editor of special sections in JAMA Psychiatry and Academic Medicine, and serves on committees including the American Psychiatric Association’s Scientific Program Committee. His work extends to public engagement as a commentator on MSNBC and NPR, columnist for NBC, and film critic for The Lancet, shaping discourse on health inequities and policy.

Professional Email: jonathan.metzl@vanderbilt.edu