Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Latest Episodes:

Kirk Schneider - Leading Psychology in Existential Times Sep 23, 2020

Show notes

Kirk Schneider is currently running for President of the American Psychological Association (APA). He is a licensed psychologist and adjunct faculty at Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is well-known as the leading spokesperson for integrative, existential, and humanistic approaches to psychology, which emphasize the therapeutic relationship and the importance of confronting the deep paradoxes of being human, and the conflicts that arise from them, in psychotherapy.

He has authored or co-authored thirteen books, including the Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, The Spirituality of Awe: Challenges to the Robotic Revolution, The Polarized Mind: Why It's Killing Us and What We Can Do About It, and, most recently, The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing. Many trainees in counseling and clinical psychology will recognize Schneider from the APA Psychotherapy Training video series featuring his therapy work.

Schneider is campaigning to serve as President of APA to "to address the existential crises that are now flaring all about us." As he puts it:

"We are in crisis racially, politically, and environmentally. We are in crisis with gender and sexual injustices, and we are in crisis with mental and physical health. In short, America is poised on the precipice, and if our profession fails to grasp this problem, we are in danger of inflaming it.

In this interview, Schneider discusses his path into psychology, including his own struggles and growth, his approach to psychotherapy, and his scholarship on the psychology of awe and the polarized mind. Then we turn to his vision for psychology; a "whole-person" approach to healthcare, a "Psychologist General" of the United States, and the development of dialogue groups that address polarization and division.

Rhonda Speight - I Found My Lion's Roar - Combining Peer Support and Open Dialogue Sep 19, 2020

Show notes

Ronda "Ro" Speight is a mental health peer specialist and recovery advocate at the Mental Health Association of Westchester in Westchester County, New York. She is a person with lived experience with the psychiatric system and a trained co-facilitator in an innovative approach that combines peer support and principles of the Open Dialogue approach called Peer Supported (Partnered) Open Dialogue (POD). POD is currently being tested in a large randomized clinical trial in the UK.

Ro was a service recipient in the Parachute Program NYC, which provided mobile crisis services and implemented respite centers in New York City—combining Intentional Peer Support and Open Dialogue informed practices. The Parachute program was discontinued, but the peer respite model it introduced in New York continues to exist. Her engagement with peers in Parachute shaped her views on mental health care and inspired her to pursue a career as a peer specialist.

Identifying as a person of color, Ro was profoundly affected by her mother's professional success as a clinical social worker who holds a doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She is highly aware of the obstacles women of color face in society and brings a racial justice perspective to the highly innovative practice of Peer Supported (Partnered) Open Dialogue.

Stuart Shipko - SSRI Withdrawal: Shooting the Odds Sep 12, 2020

Show notes

This week on MIA Radio we interview Dr. Stuart Shipko. Dr. Shipko is a psychiatrist in private practice in Pasadena, California and author of the books Surviving Panic Disorder, Xanax Withdrawal and Dr. Shipko's Informed Consent for SSRI Antidepressants.

Stuart has over 30 years' experience as a psychiatrist and an extensive background in the psychotherapies. He writes for Mad in America on issues relating to SSRI withdrawal and he has a particular interest in the side effects and withdrawal effects of antidepressants and benzodiazepines and the need for informed consent when prescribing.

We discuss: SSRI withdrawal, Tardive Akathisia, informed consent and psychiatric drug tapering.

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Jodi Aman - Anxiety, I'm So Done with You Sep 05, 2020

Show notes

This episode of "Mad in the Family" focuses on how adolescents can better manage and even overcome anxiety—something the news media and our own eyes tell us so many young people these days are struggling with.

Our guest is Jodi Amen, LCSW, a psychotherapist and coach who has more than 20 years of experience working with children, their parents, and helpers. A graduate of Columbia University School of Social Work, she has studied and taught Narrative Therapy around the globe and speaks to conferences, schools, and universities. Jodi is also trained in using complementary and alternative modalities including Ayurveda, mindfulness, yoga, energy healing, and herbalism.

A TEDx speaker and YouTuber, she is also a best-selling author. Her books include You 1, Anxiety 0, and most recently Anxiety....I'm So Done With You: A Teen's Guide to Ditching Toxic Stress & Hardwiring Your Brain For Happiness(Skyhorse Publishing).

Jodi has a private practice in Rochester, New York, and is the mother of teenagers.

Nikolas Rose - Psychiatry and the Selves We Might Become Aug 19, 2020

Show notes

Nikolas Rose is a professor of Sociology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London. His work explores how concepts in psychiatry and neuroscience transform how we think about ourselves and govern our societies.

Initially training as a biologist, Rose found his subjects unruly: "My pigeons would not peck their keys, and my rats would not run their mazes. They preferred to starve to death." He moved on to study psychology and sociology and has become one of the most influential figures in the social sciences as well as a formidable critic of mainstream psychiatric practice.

A prolific writer, Rose has over fifteen books to his name, including, most recently, Neuro with Joelle Abi-Rached (2013) and Our Psychiatric Future (2018), addressing the most pressing controversies in the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry. He is also a former Managing Editor of Economy and Society and Joint Editor-in-Chief of the interdisciplinary journal, BioSocieties.

Throughout his work, Rose emphasizes that one must look beyond origins, or "why something happened," and focus instead on the conditions under which ideas and practices emerge. The answers may not be comforting or straightforward, but they can help us to avoid band-aid solutions to complex problems.

Rose builds on the work of philosopher Michel Foucault to reveal how concepts in psychiatry and psychology go beyond explanation to construct and construe how we experience ourselves and our world. Consistent with Foucault's oft-quoted adage, "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous," Rose's work avoids simplistic explanations of why and how the mental health fields go awry and instead examines how injustices can happen without unjust people. In this way, his work often transcends critique and imagines new possibilities and ways of thinking about "mental health," "normality," "brains and minds," and, ultimately, the selves we might yet become.

Jussi Valtonen - How to Know What We Don't Know Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

Jussi Valtonen is both a novelist and a psychologist. As a novelist, his work has been compared to both George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for the way it weaves together social commentary and science fiction to jolt readers into confronting difficult questions about the soon-to-come worlds we are creating in the present. His research as a psychologist investigates how changes to the human brain impact how we think, experience, and make sense of the world. This includes recent investigations of the role of psychiatric drugs and polypharmacy on cognitive decline and functional impairment.

Valtonen is from Helsinki and studied English, philosophy, and psychology in Finland before coming to the US to study neuropsychology at Johns Hopkins University and NYU. He was also trained in screenwriting at the University of Salford in the UK and has worked as a journalist and science reporter.

He has written three novels and a short story collection. Carried by Wings (2007) was given second place in Bonnier's novel competition, and received a warm reception from both critics and bloggers. Valtonen's recent book, They Know Not What They Do (2014), won the Finlandia Prize, Finland's highest literary honor.

In this interview, Valtonen discusses how he found psychological science and literature to complement one another, the blind-spots in current psychiatric practice that harm patients, and how novels can help us to ask questions about the world we're creating.

Claudia Gold - Embrace the Messiness! Jul 18, 2020

Show notes

This episode of the "Mad in the Family" podcast discusses the role of human interaction in child development. Specifically, how conflict and miscommunication between parent and child is not only O.K., but crucial to a young person's social and emotional development. According to our guest, Dr. Claudia Gold, the "messiness" of our relationships is exactly what helps us build trust, resilience, and a solid sense of self in the world. That is the subject of her latest book, which she discusses with us.

Claudia Gold, M.D., is a pediatrician, infant-parent mental health specialist, author, teacher, and speaker based in western Massachusetts.

Dr. Gold practiced general and behavioral pediatrics for more than 25 years, focusing on a preventative model, and now specializes in early childhood mental health. She's also the director of The Hello It's Me Project, a rural community-based program designed to promote healthy relationships between infants and their caregivers.

In addition, she works as a clinician with FIRST Steps Together, a federally funded program for pregnant and parenting women with opioid-use disorders, and as an infant-parent mental health consultant at Volunteers in Medicine, Berkshires.

Dr. Gold serves on the faculty of the Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship Program at the University of Massachusetts—Boston, the Brazelton Institute at Boston Children's Hospital, and the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute.

She is the author of four books on child psychology and development: Keeping Your Child in Mind, The Silenced Child, The Developmental Science of Early Childhood, and most recently, The Power of Discord, written with Dr. Ed Tronick and published in June 2020.

Claudia is the author of numerous articles, including Mad in America blogs, presents regularly for audiences of both parents and professionals around the world.

Ian Tucker - Mental Health and Emotion in the Digital Age Jul 15, 2020

Show notes

Ian Tucker is a professor and director of impact and innovation in the school of psychology at the University of East London. His expertise is in digital media, emotion, and mental health, he has published over 45 articles and book chapters and has a monograph book entitled Social Psychology of Emotion. He is currently authoring an Emotion in the Digital Age monograph for Routledge's Studies in Science, Technology, and Society series while working on several projects involving technology and mental health.

In this interview, we discuss how Ian became interested in studying relationships between technology, emotion, and mental health. He addresses some limitations of traditional psychological approaches to these topics and overviews some of his main areas of concern with how digital technology is being used to track people's emotions and regulate their mental health.

Drawing on philosophers like Gilbert Simondon and Henri Bergson, Ian also explores how digital technologies are being used within peer-to-peer communities to create information archives about experiences with distress and medication in ways that offer collective support.

Baylissa Frederick - World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020 Jul 11, 2020

Show notes

For our second interview for this World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day podcast I'm so pleased to get the chance to chat with Baylissa Frederick.

Baylissa is a psychotherapist, coach, and author with two decades of experience working with people from all over the world. She holds a Master's degree in therapeutic counseling and is involved in helping people affected by prescribed antidepressants tranquilizer and opiate physical dependence and withdrawal.

Baylissa is the author of the internationally successful self-help book Recovery and Renewal, the memoir With Hope in my Heart and two journals; Dearest Me and Dearest Friend. Baylissa herself was prescribed the benzodiazepine clonazepam, also known as Klonopin, for a form of dystonia, an involuntary movement disorder and she survived an intense withdrawal experience when coming off. She is now fully recovered and dedicates her time to helping and supporting others.

Jim Wright - World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020 Jul 11, 2020

Show notes

This week on MIA Radio, we present the second part of our podcast to join in the events for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020 (W-BAD). In part one, we interviewed Angela Peacock and talked about her experiences of taking and coming off benzodiazepines and also her involvement in the film Medicating Normal, which has a special screening and panel discussion on July the 11th at 1:00 PM EST.

And before we go on, I just wanted to say that these podcasts would not be possible without the efforts of W-BAD lead operations volunteer Nicole Lamberson, who goes above and beyond to make these interviews possible. Later in this episode, we will hear from Baylissa Frederick, who is a therapeutic coach and psychotherapist with over two decades' experience working with clients affected by prescribed drug injury. But before we chat with Baylissa, I'm delighted to get the chance to talk with clinical pharmacologist Dr. Jim Wright.

Jim is Emeritus Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology, and Therapeutics in Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Jim obtained his MD from the University of Alberta in 1968, and his PhD in pharmacology from McGill University in 1976. He is a practicing specialist in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology. He is also Editor in Chief of the Therapeutics Letter and he sits on the editorial boards of PLoS One and the Cochrane Library. Dr. Wright's research focuses on issues relating to the appropriate use of prescription drugs, clinical pharmacology, clinical trials, systematic review, meta-analysis, and knowledge translation.

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