Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Health & Fitness:Mental Health
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.
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