Tasha Golden

Tasha Golden, PhD is Director of Research at the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and a national leader in arts + public health. She studies health impacts of arts & culture, music, aesthetics, and social norms, with special interest in intersections of music with public mental health. Holding a PhD in Public Health Sciences, Dr. Golden has served as an advisor on several national health initiatives, and is adjunct faculty for the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine.

In addition to her research, Golden is a career artist. As singer-songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery, she toured full-time in the US and abroad, and her songs appear in feature films and TV dramas (ABC, SHOWTIME, FOX, NETFLIX, etc). She is also a published poet and the founder of Project Uncaged: an arts-based health intervention for incarcerated teen women that amplifies their voices in community and political discourses.

While touring full-time, Golden found that her songs about difficult or stigmatized experiences were the ones audiences lined up after shows to discuss. Over the years, hundreds of listeners shared personal stories with Tasha about experiences such as abuse or mental illness, with many saying she was the first person they'd ever told. Given that music had also been a critical aspect of her own communications and well-being, Golden was driven to research ways in which music--and the arts more generally--support health, bolster communications, reduce stigma, and much more. Golden recently led the largest yet scoping review of music's uses in addressing serious mental illness; she also regularly offers trainings in trauma-informed practice to artists, arts organizations, and arts facilitators in all genres.