Mental Disorder – Details, episodes & analysis

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Mental Disorder

Jonah Davids

Science

News

Frequency: 1 episode/44d. Total Eps: 13

The science and politics of mental health

www.mentaldisorder.ca

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Apple Podcasts

🇬🇧 Great Britain - socialSciences
20/08/2026
#91
🇬🇧 Great Britain - socialSciences
19/08/2026
#53
🇨🇦 Canada - socialSciences
27/07/2025
#100
🇨🇦 Canada - socialSciences
26/07/2025
#90

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https://www.mentaldisorder.ca/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38
13 shares
https://thecausalfallacy.com/p/how-i-changed-my-mind-about-marijuana
3 shares
https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book
2 shares

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RSS feed quality

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Score global : 59%

Publication history

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Latest published episodes

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Carolyn Gorman - School-Based Mental Health Gets an F

Tuesday, September 17, 2024 • Duration 01:11:04

Carolyn Gorman is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute studying mental health policy. She joins me to discuss her new report “School-Based Mental-Health Initiatives: Challenges and Considerations for Policymakers,” which explores the history of mental health programs in schools and examines the limited evidence supporting their effectiveness. We talk about the different types of school-based mental health interventions and how they are used in classrooms today, whether pop psychology and therapy culture fill a vacuum in schools that religious/character/moral education would typically fill, and what schools can do to effectively improve student well-being. We conclude with some thoughts on whether there really is a youth mental health crisis, and the screen time/mental health debate.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* Carolyn’s new report

* Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ

* Allen Frances, “No Treatment as the Prescription of Choice”

* Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

* Carolyn’s review of the Anxious Generation

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William Fleming - Workplace Mental Health Isn't Working

Thursday, February 15, 2024 • Duration 58:52

William Fleming holds a PhD in sociology from The University of Cambridge, and is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Center. He joins me on the podcast to talk about the lack of evidence for workplace mental health and wellbeing initiatives. William starts by giving a history of workplace wellbeing initiatives tracing back to the British Quakers who provided food, housing, and recreational facilities for their employees beginning in the 18th century. We then get into the popular “business case” for investing in employee wellbeing initiatives before turning to William’s research which finds that these have no effect. We conclude by discussing what changes to organizational practices can actually improve employee mental health, and tradeoffs between individual and collective wellbeing.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* William Fleming, Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: Cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom.

* Ellen Barry, Workplace Wellness Programs Have Little Benefit, Study Finds.

* Jonah Davids, Corporate Mental Health Programs Don't Work.

* Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix.

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Caleb Ontiveros - Stoic Psychology

Wednesday, January 17, 2024 • Duration 01:10:23

Caleb Ontiveros is the founder of Stoa, an app that combines the ancient philosophy of stoicism with mindfulness and meditation. He writes The Stoa Letter, co-hosts the podcast Stoa Conversations, and is the editor of The Classical Futurist. Caleb and I talk about the philosophy of Stoicism and what Stoics have to say about psychology, mental health, and human flourishing. We discuss Stoic conceptions of virtue, emotion, and self-control; similarities between Stoicism, System 1 and System 2 thinking, and cognitive behavioral therapy; and why Stoic thinkers and practices appeal so much to men. We conclude by speculating about whether today’s “meaning crisis” has always been with us, and whether material progress undermines opportunities to be virtuous.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* Stoa Conversations, How to Think Fast, Slow, and Stoic.

* Brittany Polat, How Do Stoics Care?

* Johnny Thomson, Naive Stoicism: Why Pop Philosophy is Bad for your Mental Health.

* Mamat & Anderson, Improving Mental Health by Training the Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts.

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Awais Aftab - Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry

Wednesday, December 20, 2023 • Duration 01:01:53

Awais Aftab is a psychiatrist and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and writes the substack Psychiatry at the Margins. I invited him on the podcast to talk about how criticisms of psychiatry – such as critical, philosophical, and anti-psychiatry – affect mainstream theory and practice. We also discuss his recent exchange with Mad in America founder Robert Whitaker on progress in psychiatry, whether psychiatrists are responsible for rising rates of mental illness, and why many in the mental health field are now eyeing the public health approach to treatment. We conclude by talking about the difficulty of interpreting and acting upon psychiatric studies, with Awais arguing critics’ standards of evidence are so high they dismiss useful treatments like antidepressants out of hand.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* Awais Aftab, Epistemic Justice and Psychiatric Clinical Practice.

* Anti-psychiatry reading list.

* Awais Aftab, Antipsychiatry as an Analogue of Populism.

* Freedland and Zorumski, Success Rates in Psychiatry.

* Peter Simons, JAMA Psychiatry: No Evidence that Psychiatric Treatments Produce “Successful Outcomes.

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John Hirschauer - Defending the Last Institutions

Thursday, November 16, 2023 • Duration 01:12:29

John Hirschauer is an assistant editor for City Journal and a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at The Fund for American Studies. I invited him on the podcast to talk about the history, ethics, and politics of deinstitutionalization, which he has reported on extensively. In the first half of the conversation, John provides a detailed history of institutionalization in America, and how state schools for the developmentally disabled became so popular they ended up overcrowded and inhumane to live in. In the second half, we turn to the contemporary scene, where despite widespread improvements to these institutions in recent decades, disability rights activists have been campaigning to shut them down on the grounds that it’s better for the disabled to live a ‘real life’ in the community than to experience a simulacrum of life in an institution. We also talk about the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, activist psychiatrists, and why naive theories of mental illness prevention doomed the community-based care approach from the start.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* John Hirschauer, The Last Institutions.

* John Hirschauer, A Failed 'Solution' to 'America's Mental Health Crisis’.

* Robert Shavelle, David Strauss and Steven Day, Deinstitutionalization in California: Mortality of Persons with Developmental Disabilities after Transfer into Community Care, 1997-1999.

* John’s Twitter

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Kevin McCaffree - Suicide Research has Failed

Thursday, October 19, 2023 • Duration 01:06:41

Kevin McCaffree is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Texas, author of multiple books, editor of the journals Theoretical Sociology and Evolutionary Analysis in the Social Sciences, and a chief researcher at the Skeptic Research Center. I invited him to talk about his new paper “Pulling Back the Curtain on Suicide Research,” which shows that decades of suicide research have failed to reduce suicide. Kevin and I discuss who commits suicide and under what conditions, whether it’s socially contagious, and why the suicide prevention interventions we’ve developed have failed so miserably. We also talk about why we need better-trained mental health clinicians, how secularization and digital technologies have created a crisis of meaning, whether differences in theory of mind along the autism-schizophrenia spectrum explain different styles of religious and political thinking, and Kevin’s new theory of individualism that explains rising narcissism and mental health issues.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* Kevin McCaffree, Pulling Back the Curtain on Suicide Research.

* David Philipps, The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect.

* Lubin et al., Decrease in Suicide Rates After a Change of Policy Reducing Access to Firearms in Adolescents: A Naturalistic Epidemiological Study.

* Tyler Black, Associations Between Income-Based Nutrition Programs and Suicidality.

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Mel - AI, Psychedelics, and the Future of Therapy

Wednesday, September 27, 2023 • Duration 01:09:35

Mel is an ex-management consultant who now writes about the mental health economy and startup world. I invited her on the podcast to ask her about the latest trends in mental health tech and therapy, and where she thinks the industry is headed. Both of us are excited about the potential for new tech, drugs, and therapies to improve mental health, or at least make mental health treatments more accessible, but we’re also concerned that increasing access will reduce quality, and that the incentives of the startup world are misaligned with creating treatments or products that minimize harm to society. We also talk about whether AI chatbots will make good therapists, the appeal of Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), if psychedelics will lead to a religious revival, and whether humans liberated from social pressures and expectations end up more or less mentally healthy. I recommend Mental Disorder listeners/readers subscribe to Mel’s Substack, as there’s no better way to stay up to date with what’s going on in mental health.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Links:

* Mel’s Substack Headlines, her Twitter

* Winkler et al., “Startup Cerebral Soared on Easy Adderall Prescriptions. That Was Its Undoing.”

* Pi.Ai

* Schwarts & Schweezy, “Internal Family Systems Therapy: Second Edition.”

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Charles Fain Lehman - The Limits of Legalization

Wednesday, September 13, 2023 • Duration 01:06:08

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal. I invited him on the podcast to talk about his recent article “How I Changed my Mind About Marijuana.” As Charles says in our podcast, the public debate around marijuana has largely been about whether criminalization is bad rather than whether legalization is good. Since it’s been legalized, the potency of marijuana has increased, use by young people and daily use have reached all-time highs, and the illegal market has continued to thrive. Whatever your view on the subject is, it’s fair to say there’s room for improvement. We also discuss what society would look like if Amazon sold heroin, problems with the East-Asian model of drug prohibition, America’s 40-year amphetamine bender, why “psychedelic science” is mostly about legalizing psychedelics, not science, and the limits of individual liberty.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Links:

* Charles Fain Lehman, How I Changed my Mind About Marijuana.

* David T. Courtwright, The Age of Addiction.

* Charles Fain Lehman, How Equity Ruined Cannabis Legalization in New York.

* Goldstein & Sumner, Can Legal Weed Win?

* Charles Fain Lehman, Adderall Kids and their Families.

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