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We are Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf, and today we’re talking with Eric Reinhart, a physician-anthropologist of law, psychiatry, and public health and a psychoanalytic clinician in Chicago. A recent piece of his, “RFK Jr.’s Mental Health Bait and Switch,” recently appeared in The New Republic.
In this episode, we talk about:
⭐️ How the politics of health and mental healthcare are intertwined, and how clinical approaches often focus too narrowly on individual interventions rather than addressing broader social determinants of health
⭐️ The weaponization of mental health critiques by political figures like RFK Jr. and the Trump administration, who accurately identify problems in our healthcare system but propose destructive rather than constructive solutions
⭐️ How mental health "destigmatization" has benefited some groups while further marginalizing others, particularly those with serious mental illness
⭐️ The need for community-based care models and public infrastructure that values neighbor-to-neighbor support rather than solely relying on medical professionals
⭐️ The connection between eugenicist ideologies and certain public health approaches that prioritize individual responsibility over structural solutions
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