YH MENTAL HEALTH SERIES: Drive, Success, & Purpose — A Conversation with Dr. Joel Bervell

May is a Mental Health Awareness Month.

2025 Webby Award winner (Health, Wellness & Fitness), 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Social Media, TIME 100 Creator, and 2025 Peabody Award recipient (Interactive & Immersive), Dr. Joel Bervell has become one of the most influential voices at the intersection of medicine and media.

He is also a 2024 TED Fellow, Smithsonian Channel “Cyclebreaker", Scientific American "Revolutionary", Rock Health Top 50 Leader in Digital Health, 2023 Anthem Award Gold Winner, and 2022 National Minority Quality Forum "40 Under 40 Leader in Minority Health". He received the National Medical Association’s Emerging Scholar Award, the organization’s highest academic honor for a student.

Mashable described him as "your next must-follow creator."

Beyond medicine and media, Joel is the co-founder of Hugs For, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering the next generation of global youth leaders. The organization has mobilized hundreds of volunteers, raised over $500,000 in donations, and successfully planned service trips to Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania,Sierra Leone, and Uganda. He also serves in advisory roles with Every Cure and the Ron Brown Leaders Network Council.

As an interviewer, I had the pleasure of discovering Joel to be one of the most eloquent speakers, effortlessly shifting between depth, humor, and factual insight in a most natural way. 

Yes, his credentials are impressive, but the purpose is what makes him remarkable.

Please welcome Dr. Joel Bervell.

YH: Did you know or feel that you have a big purpose in life?

JB: I don’t know if I always knew I would do something. I think I wanted to. I’ve always loved superhero stories. Especially, especially ones that center identity and justice. And there’s one show that I absolutely loved as a kid and that whenever I need to pick me up, I go back to because it just takes me back to when I was younger. It’s this TV show called "Static Shock". And it’s about this kid named Virgil Hawkins, who’s a Black kid in the United States. He’s growing up as a young Black superhero, navigating school, navigating responsibility and trying to do what’s right in a complicated world. And I think it was one of the first shows that really talked about what it meant to really think about justice as a teenager, as a young person. And it intersected his civil rights in normal conversations. I saw a real piece of myself in Static and wanted to be like him. My college essay was actually about "Static Shock" and the similarities I saw between us. There was also an episode where he travels to Ghana and explores the culture there. That really stayed with me because it connected to stories my dad used to tell me. 

YH: What advice would you give to somebody who is ambitious or pursuing multiple goals at once?

JB: When I went to Yale for undergrad, they always told us that Yale is a liberal arts education, meaning that we don't come here just to learn one thing. You come here to learn about the arts, about the sciences, about physics, about theater, about history. The thing I would tell to someone who is ambitious is that their path doesn't need to make sense to everyone else. Look, there's a lot of pressure to stick to one lane and just go with it. But that growth happens when you bring in multiple things in your life, when you bring in multiple intersections of different interests. So giving yourself permission to explore, to evolve, I think individuals start to surprise themselves about who you become when you do that. And when it comes to things like time management and also protecting your focus, learning how to prioritize what matters, setting boundaries for your own time, being intentional about how you spend energy and who you spend it with, I think all those things are things that are underrated but will make a huge difference. Because talent, ambition, they matter. But the thing that matters more is consistency, good habits, and that actually has the potential to turn into something meaningful.

YH: If you ever experienced burnout, how did you recognize it in yourself?

JB: I think that’s a great question. Anyone who goes through medical training will probably brush up against burnout at some point. For me, the early signs weren’t dramatic -- they were subtle. Things that used to excite me started to feel more like obligations, and I noticed myself becoming emotionally numb to stories that would normally move me. I especially felt that earlier this year after finishing an ICU rotation during residency. I was working six days a week, 7am to 7pm, dealing with incredibly intense situations -- performing CPR on someone, then minutes later having to tell a family their loved one had passed away. After a while, I started feeling like I was just going through the motions without really processing what was happening. What I realized is that burnout doesn’t always look like exhaustion. Sometimes it looks like disconnection from the reason you loved the work in the first place. Once I recognized that, I became more intentional about reconnecting with why I entered medicine. For me, that’s always been about patients, storytelling, and advocating for people whose stories often go unheard. Honestly, social media has become an outlet against burnout for me. It gives me a way to reflect on the experiences I witness in the hospital, share them with others, and reconnect with the human side of the work.

YH: Who do you lean on when you’re feeling down or burned out?

JB: I truly believe I have some of the best friends in the world. And so I think for me, it’s my best friends from medical school. We went through some of the hardest parts of training together. We had long nights studying. I was in medical school during the COVID pandemic too. Having support systems with people that understand similar things to what you’re going through is really important because that shared experience means that it’s an emotional weight you can share with other people. One of my best friends once told me before residency, “You’re going to be exhausted, but if you have the energy, still go out, still have experiences, still be human." And that was the best advice he ever could have given me. Because with those people, I don’t have to be a doctor. I don’t have to be a public voice. I can just be Joel myself.

YH: How do you manage stress?

JB: Exercise and travel. Exercise because it gets you physically healthy, but also it’s kind of my meditation time. Like, I didn’t go to the gym for like two weeks, and immediately I felt myself getting slower and just falling back into how I was feeling on my ICU rotation. And the other thing for me is travel. I absolutely love to travel. And there’s this word I love that’s called "sonder". It’s this idea that you are just a small piece of the world around you. Whenever I travel to a new country, I will try to find a park and just sit down and watch people walk by. I also love solo travel because I think those are rare experiences where we get to sit with ourselves and get to know ourselves a little bit better.

YH: What do you think is negatively affecting mental health for younger generations today?

JB: I think the way that social media has reshaped the sense of time, success, and self-worth in some ways, especially for the younger generation, has been negative. I think young people today are constantly exposed (I feel like I’m guilty of this too) to highlights of other people’s lives. So we see career milestones, we see relationships, we see achievements, as if they happened overnight. When you’re seeing that all day, every day, it can start to feel like you’re falling behind, even if you’re supposed to, even if you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be at that moment. And it also makes the pressure to constantly be optimizing yourself, to be thinking about a better career, your body, your productivity, even your happiness. But I think the danger is that life starts to feel like something that you have to perform rather than actually just experience. And when you have, when your sense of value becomes tied to comparison with the innovation online, it starts to erode mental health. I think we need to remind people, especially younger people, that meaningful growth happens far away from the algorithm, not online, but that happens quietly and slowly. And I don’t know how we get back to that at all. If I could do one thing in the social media landscape to improve mental health, it would be teaching people to use social media and to use digital tools the same way we teach people to drive a car. I think if you ever said "I’m gonna let someone drive this car" without ever showing them how to, of course they’re gonna get hurt. We use these tools in our hands every single day, but no one’s ever formally taught you how to use it, how to protect yourself from bullying, how to recognize scams online, how to detect misinformation, disinformation, how to avoid getting sucked into a rabbit hole. These are things that aren’t naturally learned because they’re not, technology is not natural to who we are, so yeah, I think about this a lot. 

YH: What’s something you believed about medicine before starting residency that completely changed once you were actually in it?

JB: Before residency, I really thought that medicine was all about knowledge. But I also realized that medicine is a lot more about systems, communication, and humanity. The science is essential because it helps us diagnose and get the right treatment. But what’s equally as important is the way that we listen, advocate, educate, and navigate healthcare structures. And I’ve had some really hard conversations -- diagnosing HIV, talking about cancer, asking families whether they think we should take their loved one off the ventilator. Those are things that no amount of studying will make you equipped for. And before residency, I really didn’t realize how much of medicine is actually that.

YH: How has hearing stories from underserved communities shaped your perspective as a doctor?

JB: Yeah, one thing -- the volume of stories has been incredibly eye-opening. In medical training, we really learn through clinical studies, guidelines, and case presentations, but the sources don’t always capture the entire lived experiences of individuals. And I think, through social media, I’ve gotten to hear thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of firsthand accounts from people who have felt dismissed, misdiagnosed, or just overlooked in the healthcare system. These stories are also forms of evidence that often get overlooked. And I think, for me, seeing these stories up close has made me a better doctor because I don’t take anything for granted anymore.

YH: What should we do to make the world a better place?

JB: When I was in high school, there was this concept we learned about in leadership called "servant leadership". In our class, we talked a lot about something called the amazing law of influence. It’s the idea that every person has the ability to impact others way more than they realize. We started doing small things: helping the janitor sweep the school after school, opening the doors every single day, making valentines for every single person in the class. Those small interactions feel small in the moment, but influence works like a ripple effect. So making the world a better place doesn’t require a massive gesture. I truly think it starts with being intentional about the way you show up for people around you. And I think when more people do that consistently, those small ripples actually become real change.