Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Health & Fitness:Mental Health
This week, we interview Dr Peter Gordon. Dr Gordon describes himself as a gardener with an interest in medicine. He trained in both medicine and landscape architecture before specialising in psychiatry and now works with older adults in Scotland. In addition, he is an activist and campaigner and has a range of creative interests including filmmaking, photography, writing and poetry.
In this interview, we walk about Peter’s own experiences of psychiatric treatment and how we need to address the divide that exists between the arts and the medical sciences.
In this episode we discuss:
What led Dr Gordon to have combined interests in the arts and the sciences, training both in architecture and medicine. How Peter was interested in the plurality of thinking required for psychiatry as opposed to general medicine. How he feels that his training in both the arts and the sciences led to a more rounded appreciation of why purely biological approach might miss opportunities to help people. How Peter became an activist, partly in response to the commonly taught subjective/objective diagnostic approach. How we should be focussed on the potential of any medical intervention to cause harm and should consider this carefully alongside any potential benefit. How we need to take account of all experiences to ensure we provide the maximum benefit and minimum harm to people. Peter’s own experiences with the mental health system, taking antidepressant drugs and experiencing treatment within a psychiatric hospital. How stopping his antidepressant drug resulted in withdrawal effects and led to Peter’s only episode of severe depression. Why Peter is concerned that we seem to be downplaying the experiences of people who have struggled with psychiatric drugs. How Peter’s experiences have influenced his approach to prescribing. The dominance of the biological approach and why it should not dictate how we respond to individual experiences. How the evidence is starting to show that diagnosis can often disempower and bring about ‘otherness’. Peter’s plea for people to be kind to one another and work together to maximise well-being.Relevant links:
Peter’s blog: Hole Ouisa
The caption is wrong
Paroxetine tablets [Film-coated]
Peter’s films on Vimeo
Mary Midgley
Nathan Filer, The Shock of the Fall
Raymond Tallis
To get in touch with us email: podcasts@madinamerica.com
© Mad in America 2018
Lillian Comas-Diaz - Addressing the Roots of Racial Trauma
Derek Blumke – The Mad in America Veterans Initiative
Craig Wiener - ADHD, A Return to Psychology
Pat Bracken - Toward a Critical Self-Reflective Psychiatry
Diana Kopua - Learning a Different Way
World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2019 - Part 2
World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2019 - Part 1
Lucy Johnstone - The Creation of a Conceptual Alternative to the DSM
Lee Coleman - Breaking Out of the Circle - Creating a Non-violent Revolution
Felicity Thomas and Richard Byng - Poverty, Pathology and Pills
Adriane Fugh-Berman - Getting Pharma Out of Medical Education
David Cohen - Mad Science, Psychiatric Coercion and the Therapeutic State
John Read - Fighting for the Meaning of Madness
Lee Coleman – The Insanity Defence, Storytelling on the Witness Stand
Jonathan Raskin - Constructing Alternatives to the DSM
Kelly Brogan - The Science and Pseudoscience of Women’s Mental Health
Vance Trudeau - Antidepressant Exposure Across Generations
Lee Coleman - The Reign of Error
Mark Horowitz - Peer-Support Groups Were Right, Guidelines Were Wrong - Tapering Off Antidepressants
Gail Hornstein - First-Person Accounts of Madness and Global Mental Health
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Good Mood Revolution
Mental Health Insights
MQ Open Mind
Speaking of Suicide
The Suicide Prevention Movement
Depression Talks Podcast