History of Psychiatry | Prof. Elizabeth Lunbeck

10/23/23 • 45 min

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.

Previous Episode

Climate Change & Mental Health | Daniel Sherrell

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.

Next Episode

Bonus: Mental Health Services, Part 2 | Dr. Lloyd Sederer

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.