DR. WHO David Roth, MD
By the time Dr. David Roth returned to Louisville last year, nearly three decades had passed since he’ d left home. In those years, he built a remarkable career spanning pediatrics, psychiatry, telemedicine innovation, public service and cutting-edge mental health treatments. He worked across the Hawaiian islands, helped pioneer school-based telepsychiatry programs and trained alongside some of the nation’ s leading experts in interventional psychiatric therapies.
Yet despite the professional success, there was something missing.
“ I’ d been away from home for 28 years,” he said.“ You end up missing births, graduations, funerals, and you don’ t get any Sunday night dinners.”
Today, he is back where his story began, bringing with him not only a wealth of experience, but a renewed sense of purpose. As he prepares to open a new mental health practice called Bluegrass Advanced Mental Health focused on transcranial magnetic stimulation( TMS) and Spravato( a nasal spray antidepressant treatment) he is reconnecting with the community that first shaped him, and carrying forward a family legacy that has been part of Louisville medicine for generations.
Long before he became a physician himself, Dr. Roth was known throughout Louisville by a different title.“ My dad is Dr. John Roth, the pediatrician,” he said.“ Growing up, about a third of the kids in every class I ever attended were patients of his office. So I was known as‘ Dr. Roth’ s kid,’ which was really fun.”
by Kathryn Vance
His father’ s influence was ever-present, not through pressure to pursue medicine, but through example. He watched as children greeted his father enthusiastically in public places. He saw firsthand the relationships that physicians could build within a community. Still, medicine was not an obvious destination. At Northwestern University, he pursued one of his greatest passions: the history and literature of world religions.
“ I was always a fan of mythology, and as a child of the‘ 70s and‘ 80s, Dungeons and Dragons was big when I was a kid,” he said with a laugh.
His academic interests stretched across anthropology, linguistics, religion and culture. He was fascinated by how different societies understand the world and how people’ s beliefs shape their experiences. Those interests would later become surprisingly valuable in his medical career.
Before medicine fully captured his attention, he explored other possibilities, including an internship studying international business through Louisville’ s economic development office.“ I quickly learned that while I was enjoying it, it really wasn’ t hitting my passion points,” he said.
Then came a conversation that changed everything. A physician friend of his father’ s explained that medicine could be many things at once: a profession that allowed room for science, writing, research, business and human connection.“ He told me that if I went into medicine, I could do so many things at different levels,” he recalled.
The flexibility appealed to him, and so did the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in people’ s lives. He entered medical school not having a clear vision of what he wanted to do, but along the way, a path began to emerge. As Dr. Roth moved through medical training, he found himself consistently drawn toward children and families. While classmates focused on laboratory values and disease processes, Roth
38 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE