Before he laced up his sneakers five years ago and began to run for fun, Julio Nunes, MD, struggled to understand why long-distance runners chose to pummel their bodies. “I always made fun of marathon runners. Why are you doing that?” the third-year Yale Department of Psychiatry resident would say.
Nunes gets it now, and he’s poised to join the marathon runners club in 2025 when he runs the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on October 12 as a member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Race for Hope team.
“If I’m going to run a marathon, I might as well do it for a good reason,” he said, explaining why he chose to run and raise money for AFSP. “Particularly as a psychiatrist, I feel like running for an organization like AFSP will definitely motivate you.”
And motivate him it has. Even on the coldest of days this winter, Nunes has been outside training. He runs three days a week, usually for 30 to 45 minutes on the shorter runs and does a long run every Sunday. He is also following a strength training regimen that involves weightlifting. Prone to calf injuries, he said it made sense to cross-train to maintain strength while improving his endurance for the 26.2-mile race in October. He will run this race with Simon Asnes, a postgraduate associate in psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
Nunes is from Brazil. He earned his medical degree from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro School of Medicine and Surgery and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Stanford University Center for Clinical Research, where he focused on shared decision-making and healthcare disparities.
At Yale, he is on the Yale Psychiatry Residency Program’s research track and is a member of the Pain and Addiction Interaction Neuroscience (PAIN) Lab, which studies pharmacological treatments for patients with co-occurring chronic pain and substance use disorders. He has a particular interest in how healthcare disparities impact pain management for individuals with addiction disorders. Nunes is also dedicated to medical education and mentoring, having won a teaching award from the department.
Nunes’s free time is limited due to his busy schedule, but running is a priority not only to keep his body healthy, but to quiet his mind, he said. “Residency training is hard. The kind of work that we do is very anxiety inducing and running is my way of practicing self-care,” he said. “Yale is a very accomplished environment, and it feels good to pose a different type of challenge to myself in addition to the challenges of residency. It’s a form of finding your own resiliency.”
He said having the opportunity to train for a marathon speaks to the premium Yale and the psychiatry department put on work-life balance. “When prospective residency applicants are looking for residency programs, I advise emphasizing places that will allow you to pursue projects in and out of residency. I appreciate that at Yale I can balance academics and clinical training with other activities that are important to me,” he said. “The mere fact that I’m able to train for a marathon… while I’m doing my research and my clinical work, that speaks to the type of support that we have.”
In researching where to run his first marathon, Nunes landed on Chicago – the second largest marathon in the United States – because the course is largely flat and winds through many of the city’s neighborhoods. “The professionals recommend this one as a first,” Nunes said. “I don’t know Chicago, but I sure am going to get to know it in October.”
His goal is to raise at least $3,000 for AFSP, and he’s a little more than two-thirds of the way there. “The foundation is very special in many ways,” he said. “They are transparent in how the manage their donations, as reflected by the four stars they have on Charity Navigator, the maximum score. Around 82 percent, if not more, of all donations go directly into programs that try to mitigate suicide. They finance research, public engagement initiatives, advocacy groups, and support groups for survivors of suicide loss. My biggest concern when choosing an organization to run for was making sure the money goes to good use. With AFSP, my support is reassured.”
In turn, he has received support – both financially in the form of donations to his fundraising page and through encouragement to continue his training – from resident colleagues and attending physicians. “It’s been well received,” he said. “I’m very excited to do this.”
To support Nunes and the AFSP please click here to access his race fundraising page.