Psychiatrist David Brent Joye Named as Co-defendant in Wrongful Death Lawsuit against Hims & Hers

November 17, 2025

The parents of Luke Tyler, the Washington State University (WSU) freshman who was found dead in his dorm room on January 22, 2023, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the King County Superior Court against Hims & Hers Health, Inc. (Hims) and others. Hims is a self-described publicly traded telehealth platform. Andrew Dudum, a co-founder of Hims, has touted the company’s vision as “being able to build the healthcare system of the future.”

In their lawsuit, Colleen and John Tyler allege that less than an hour after Hims targeted Luke through an Instagram ad, a Texas-based Hims “provider” prescribed Luke 90 days’ worth of an antidepressant known to increase the risk of suicide in adolescents without any consultation, despite Luke’s disclosed history of undiagnosed depression and “bad self-harm habits.”

Read the entire story here. (Lawsuit is linked at the end.)

Psychcrime reviewed the details of the lawsuit and noted that defendants include North Carolina-based psychiatrist David Brent Joye, who is indicated as the person who initially responded to Luke Tyler's inquiry to Hims, seeking help with depression. The lawsuit alleges that Joye was not licensed in the state of Washington when he practiced medicine on Luke Tyler. Psychcrime found that Joye has active licenses in 43 states--most of them obtained in 2022, though he was only licensed in North Carolina in 2020. It is possible that Joye may have treated patients in some of these 43 states via Hims before he was actually licensed to practice in them?