Delaney Ruston made her first film when she was a resident at UC San Francisco.

While the rest of her medical school classmates delivered their final presentations in typical PowerPoint fashion, Ruston was inspired by the “video camera revolution” and the capability of film to portray people’s stories, she said. In the film, she told the story of a family that didn’t want her to tell their mother that she had cancer.

“When I was in medical school, we never used stories to talk about and to explore how to best care for people,” Ruston recalls. “I realized I could do this. I could help people tell their personal stories, to impact other people, for social change.”

Since then, Ruston has made film a core part of her career, founding her production company MyDoc Productions in 2004. Her documentaries focus on topics related to social change, with a particular emphasis on mental health.

“I am passionate about helping others understand that sharing their experiences paves the way for the support they need to navigate these challenges,” Ruston says.

Her recent work includes the Screenagers series, which dives into mental health challenges faced by young people, including the impact of screen time, vaping, drugs, and alcohol in the digital age. The most recent edition, titled Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition, premiered in West Seattle in October. The films have been screened in 104 countries to more than 14 million viewers.

“It’s really mission driven from my core that people should have access to great care no matter who you are.”

Ruston picks film topics that “come from a place of hardship.” One of her most challenging films, the 2010 Unlisted: A Story of Schizophrenia, grappled with her father’s battle with the condition.

“By nature of picking these hard topics that are dear to me, it means that I’m going to be facing emotional things along the way,” Ruston says. “But at the same time, that is exactly what is healing. It’s the creating something positive out of these hardships that makes it worthwhile.”

Alongside her work in film, Ruston is a renowned speaker on the topic of youth mental health, speaking at the World Health Organization, TEDx, the Aspen Institute, the United Nations and more. Ruston has practiced medicine for 25 years, and has worked for the University of Washington School of Medicine and Stony Brook Medicine in New York state. Now, she works as a long-term locum (fill-in) doctor for Seattle’s Neighborcare Health, offering comprehensive care to underserved communities.

Receiving health care from free clinics in Berkeley growing up made Ruston passionate about giving back as a medical professional. “It’s really mission driven from my core that people should have access to great care no matter who you are,” she adds.

Though film and medicine are two vastly different fields, Ruston’s goal with both sides of her career remains singular: to “serve the underserved,” she said.

“I wish that our highest value was placed on helping people,” Ruston said. “If we valued that interface of humans helping other humans in the way that we value the way money is made, I think we would be so much further along as a society.”