Psychiatry & Society

Youth in the United States and around the world are suffering, with heartbreakingly high rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. How can schools and teachers help? Join us on today's episode for a perspective from Richard Brady, a career teacher from whom I learned much more than high school geometry. Mr. Brady founded the Mindfulness in Education Network, which helps teachers guide students in practicing healthy ways of relating to their emotions, development, and aspirations.

Listen in to this brief bonus episode, as Dr. Lloyd Sederer returns to the podcast to discuss takeaways from his new book: Caught in the Crosshairs of American Healthcare. Dr. Sederer discusses the impact of corporatization and how to sustain a focus on what patients need in the face of financial pressure.

We may be used to thinking about mental health through the lens of psychology. What might we learn from looking through a different lens? Diverse fields of study can bring new insight - Sociology, Anthropology, Urban Studies, Political Science, Philosophy, Biology, to name a few. On this episode, we look through the lens of History at our central question - what makes for a mentally healthy society? Our guest, Elizabeth Lunbeck PhD, chairs the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.

We are living in an era of rapid change - for example in our technology, social movements, and the environment. These changes influence our mental health and are themselves influenced by our usual ways of thinking and feeling about the world - our habits of mind. On this episode, we see what we can learn about what makes for a mentally healthy society by exploring one big change we are all going through - climate change. Our guest is Daniel Sherrell, an organizer who passed landmark climate justice legislation in New York and who now works to address climate change in Australia. Dan is the author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of our World, which is written as a letter to an imagined future child about how it feels to visualize a future and a family under the weight of climate change.

What can we learn from an international perspective about promoting mental health at home? Global health visionary Dr. Vikram Patel shares insights from research and practice around the world.

What sort of healthcare system best supports the mental health of society as a whole? In today's episode, we hear from Dr. Lloyd Sederer, who uses his experience leading public and private mental healthcare systems to explain the biggest challenges and most promising solutions.

Defining mental health is not straightforward, but it is important - because how we understand and describe mental health conditions has a real impact on mental health. In today's episode, psychologist Dr. John Kelly shares his expertise on stigma to help us understand the consequences of our ways of viewing addiction and recovery.

Social factors can be as important to health as biology. So, how our society approaches social issues matters for our collective mental health. In this episode, we zoom in on one social determinant of health - housing - and explore in depth its relationship with mental health. Our guest, Dr. Katherine Koh, brings a humanistic and clinical perspective as a psychiatrist with Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, to help us understand the causes, consequences, and solutions at the intersection of homelessness and mental health.

It's not all about healthcare. There are many ways of promoting mental health, including policy-making, public education, advocacy, leadership, and research. This episode focuses on one  way of promoting mental health in particular - speaking with one another about our experiences of mental health and illness. Our guest Steve Fedele, writer, educator, and peer specialist at McLean Hospital, shares what he has learned about how to bring lived experience to bear in supporting one another.

What Makes for a Mentally Healthy Society?