We are honored to bring together two nationally known leaders in the field of mental health for a fascinating discussion about their two new best-selling books: Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH, author of Project Unlonely: Healing our Crisis of Disconnection, and Thomas Insel, MD, author of HEALING, Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health. Loneliness has become a daily source of profound anguish for millions of people worldwide, causing the United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy to advise that it is the public health crisis of our time.
In his new book, PROJECT UNLONELY, Dr. Nobel, MD, MPH offers a bold perspective to heal this personal and public health crisis. He explores what it means to be lonely, what it means to be creative, and what it means to be connected – to be UnLonely , and he and offers solace, hope, and solutions. As the founder of the Foundation for Art & Healing whose signature initiative is Project Unlonely, Dr. Nobel has spent almost two decades helping people recognize and understand loneliness in the hope of destigmatizing and healing it. In Project Unlonely, he unpacks our personal and national experience of loneliness to discover its roots and to show us how we can take steps to find connection.
In HEALING, Dr. Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health from 2002-2015, offers A bold, expert, and actionable map for the re-invention of America’s broken mental health care system. Seeing that the gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need, Dr. Insel left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken—and what a better path to mental health might look like.
Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH Physician, Teacher, and Author is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His teaching and research activities focus on population health, social determinants of health, and the design and evaluation of health improvement intervention programs.With the unique background and training required tobridge scientific and humanistic disciplines, he hascontributed to significant explorations into how creativeexpression mitigates illness and enhances wellbeing.He has become a prominent advocate for creativeengagement, ancillary to and integrated with traditional medical care, as a pathway to healing.Dr. Nobel’s book published by Penguin Random House in 2023 Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection unpacks our personal and national experience of loneliness to discover its roots and take steps to find comfort and connection. He clarifies how meaningful connection can be nourished and sustained, and he reveals that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity.Dr. Nobel graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University within the Science and Human Affairs program. He received his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania and completed his internal medicine residency at the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston. Board-certified in both Preventive Medicine and Internal Medicine, Dr. Nobel also holds Master’s Degrees in Epidemiology and Health Policy from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.Poet & PhotographerA published poet, Dr. Nobel has received several awards for his poetry including the Bain-Swiggett Prize from Princeton University, and the American Academy of Poets Prize from the University of Pennsylvania.Dr. Nobel has been writing poetry and taking photographs since high school and studied both arts in college. In medical school, as he encountered studies demonstrating that art plays an important role in healing, he realized that his artistic, scientific, and humanistic interests were complementary.An avid arts supporter, Dr. Nobel has served on the Board of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company of New York City, the Board of Overseers of the De Cordova Art Museum in Lincoln, MA, and the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston Director’s Circle.
Thomas lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently (2015 – 2017), he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA. In 2017, he co-founded Mindstrong Health, a Silicon Valley start-up building tools for people with serious mental illness. Dr. Insel co-founded Vanna Health in 2022 and currently serves as Executive Chair. Vanna Health is focused on the needs of people with serious mental illness and works with community partners to provide the 3 Ps (people, place, and purpose) for recovery. In 2020, he co-founded Humanest Care, a therapeutic online community for recovery. Since May of 2019, Dr. Insel has been a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Chair of the Board of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento, California. He launched MindSite News (mindsitenews.org), a non-profit digital publication focused on mental health issues. Dr. Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards, including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europe.