Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal. I invited him on the podcast to talk about how moral and epistemic values structure public policy debates around homelessness and mental illness. We talk about how relativism has paved the way for a team-up between “trust the science” technocrats and those with the right kinds of “lived experience.” While psychiatry’s scientific status is questionable, we both agree that mental health reformers on the center-left and -right have little choice but to ground their arguments in its “objectivity” in today’s political environment. We also discuss the limits of “housing first” approaches to homelessness, the Freudian revolution, how expanding the definition of mental illness has hurt those with the worst illnesses, and why taking morality out of mental health has paved the way for figures like Jordan Peterson to gain popularity. We conclude by talking about how families of people with serious mental illness have been negatively impacted by deinstitutionalization, and how a pro-family political movement could harness their stories to improve mental healthcare.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Links:

* Stephen Eide, Political Theory for the Homeless.

* Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.

* Stephen Eide, Homelessness in America: The History and Tragedy of an Intractable Social Problem.

* Homelessness in America [Video].

* Stephen Eide, DSM Review: The Meaning of Madness.

* Jonah Davids, The Economics of Mental Illness.

* Stephen Eide, To Help the Mentally Ill Help Their Families.

* Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family.

* Stephen at the Manhattan Institute.