Julie Hersh

Mental health advocate Julie Hersh has dedicated her life to helping individuals with depression recover from the disorder. Through her talks on mental health wellness, Hersh teaches people how to safeguard themselves against mental illness before the necessity for intervention manifests itself in suicide attempts or hospitalization. Julie Hersh is in a unique position to speak about the importance of this issue, having herself lived through three suicide attempts before breaking free of her depression.

Julie Hersh initially fought through her clinical depression after receiving electroconvulsive therapy in 2001. She underwent the therapy again in 2007 after a depressive relapse and has not had the need for further ECT treatments since then. Today, Julie Hersh encourages individuals to create their own mental health wellness plan that focuses on adequate nutrition, exercise, and sleep as well as a solid social support system and effective stress management techniques. Hersh emphasizes that not every plan will work for every individual, and that while medication and ECT may be helpful for some, they may not be necessary for others.

Since beginning her career as a public speaker, Hersh has been invited to share her story with students at a number of educational institutions, including her alma mater, the University of Notre Dame; Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine (University of Pennsylvania;UT Southwestern and St. Mark’s School of Texas, a high school in Dallas along with several other high schools, colleges and universities. She also speaks frequently at industry events, recently attending the California Maternal Mental Health Conference, where she participated in a panel discussion on brain stimulation. She is the author of the book Struck by Living: From Depression to Hope, a frank discussion of her illness and her journey to mental wellness.