Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health


The Mad in America podcast, hosted by James Moore, examines mental health with a critical eye by speaking with psychologists, psychiatrists and people with lived experience.

When you hear such conversations, you realise that much of what is believed to be settled in mental health is actually up for debate. Is mental health a matter of faulty biology or is there more to it? Are the treatments used in psychiatry helpful or harmful in the long term? Are psychiatric diagnoses reliable? With the help of our guests, we examine these questions and so much more. 

This podcast is part of Mad in America’s mission to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care and mental health. We believe that the current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society and that scientific research, as well as the lived experience of those who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, calls for profound change. 

On the podcast over the coming weeks, we will have interviews with experts and those with lived experience of the psychiatric system. Thank you for joining us as we discuss the many issues around rethinking mental health around the world.

For more information visit madinamerica.com

 

Jan 15, 2020

Dr. Anthony Ryan Hatch is a sociologist and associate professor of Science in Society, African American studies and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, who studies how medicine and technology impact social inequality and health.

Professor Hatch is the author of two books. His first book, Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America, critiques how biomedical scientists, government researchers, and drug companies use the concepts of race and ethnicity to study and treat ‘metabolic syndrome,’ a biomedical construct that identifies people at high risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. His second book, Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America, examines how custodial institutions like prisons, nursing homes, and the U.S. military use psychotropic drugs to manage mass incarceration and captivity in the United States.

His 2018 Wesleyan TedX talk is entitled “How Social Institutions Get Hooked on Drugs.”