On his book Break On Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture
Cover Interview of February 12, 2020
Lastly
Mental health is an emotionally charged issue. And rightly
so. Given the World Health Organization’s recent warnings that mental illness
will become the planet’s most common illness in the next two decades, it is not
surprising that mainstream, preventative, and alternative approaches to mental
illness are attracting attention.
For instance, in 2018, the UK-based Wellcome Trust
Foundation, advocated a “radical new approach” to mental health treatment
because “different disciplines use different measurement scales, there are inconsistent
approaches to diagnosis and treatment, and there’s a lack of shared data.”
This is important to recognize. That the current discussion
about mental health is ongoing – and it’s got a long history. Whether we’re plumbers
or pediatricians or politicians, we should understand that some debates happen
over and over. Or what was once considered radical is pretty obvious.
Raymond Waggoner, the president of the 16,000-member strong
APA in 1968, asserted that “change was a catchword in American life” and the
APA ought to be more “action-oriented.” He added: “We should not be afraid to
be social activists,” and psychiatry ought to play a more “constructive role in
our future society.”
Fifty years later we still struggle with mental health
policy. And we could all get a bit more “action-oriented.”
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
Mental health is an emotionally charged issue. And rightly so. Given the World Health Organization’s recent warnings that mental illness will become the planet’s most common illness in the next two decades, it is not surprising that mainstream, preventative, and alternative approaches to mental illness are attracting attention.
For instance, in 2018, the UK-based Wellcome Trust Foundation, advocated a “radical new approach” to mental health treatment because “different disciplines use different measurement scales, there are inconsistent approaches to diagnosis and treatment, and there’s a lack of shared data.”
This is important to recognize. That the current discussion about mental health is ongoing – and it’s got a long history. Whether we’re plumbers or pediatricians or politicians, we should understand that some debates happen over and over. Or what was once considered radical is pretty obvious.
Raymond Waggoner, the president of the 16,000-member strong APA in 1968, asserted that “change was a catchword in American life” and the APA ought to be more “action-oriented.” He added: “We should not be afraid to be social activists,” and psychiatry ought to play a more “constructive role in our future society.”
Fifty years later we still struggle with mental health policy. And we could all get a bit more “action-oriented.”