“One patient sharing their experience with another is potentially more impactful than a psychiatrist telling a patient what their experience might be like,” said Golden.

Physicians can also use the site to get a sense of the variety of patient experiences and should help them empathize with the experience of living constantly with depression.

Medical educators can use the website to bring much-needed patient perspective into the classroom, something that has been difficult without technology, said Gaines.

“How do you get the patient voice to the classroom and have them not be one-offs?” Gaines said. “You run the risk that that gets translated to future professionals as ‘This is how patients do or should cope with this,’” even though that data might not be representative, she said.

Gaines, who is also a clinical professor of law at UW, believes this website provides the solution.

“For me, I can now bring patients’ voices into the virtual classroom, and actually have real patients speaking for themselves,” she said.

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