Fall 2026 Colloquium Series: Dr. Gabriel Varela

Public discourse treats mental health self-diagnosis as social media contagion yet says little about how personal relationships play a role in taking up and sustaining a diagnosis without a clinician. Drawing on personal network surveys and interviews with U.S. college students, I argue that close, formally diagnosed contacts act as authority brokers, channeling the authority to label from medical professionals into communities through shared experience and trust. Models suggest that contacts with a formal diagnosis are more likely to be named as important to a person's decision to self-diagnose. Interviews reveal three brokerage roles: mirroring, initiating, and affirming. These findings highlight that medical authority is not so much rejected as redistributed through close relationships. 

 

Bio: Gabriel Varela (he/him) received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University in 2025. He is a medical sociologist and network analyst, whose research investigates the complex interplay between social connections and health, using a combination of methods. His dissertation explored how collective actions and social networks contribute to the formation of new forms of illness, using mental health self-diagnosis as a case study. His research has been published in outlets including Social Science & Medicine, Social Networks, and Annals of Epidemiology.