It's Not Just In Your Head

Max interviews Occupational Therapist Maria Dong to talk about the many ways our for-profit healthcare system negatively impacts healthcare workers and patient outcomes. Maria can be reached at @mariadongwrites on twitter. Email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com and become a patreon at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Harriet reviews Biden's ambitious infrastructure and jobs plan and the inclusion of various aspects of the "caring economy," including investment into childcare, healthcare, eldercare, etc. Such jobs are overwhelmingly performed by women, mostly women of color, and are notoriously underpaid. Harriet praises the arguably "revolutionary" potential of Biden's plans, then critiques them with focus on proposed timelines of implementation and lack of attention to pay disparities within "caring" fields (ie, physician to nurse aid; psychiatrist to mental health counselor). Max explains how union and worker co-op efforts to set pay ratios within workplaces and industries could address the pay disparity problem for women, and generally, but questions whether workplace democracy needs to be "made allowed" more from the top or "fought for" from the bottom. --- We've released this episode one week early to invite listeners to our first ever patrons-only reading/discussion hour with Harriet and Max on the following article: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/536924-the-care-economy-as-an-infrastructure-investment. This discussion will take place April 23, Friday, 12pm PST / 3pm PST. This will be an ongoing perk for patrons, who will influence what is read and discussed monthly. If you absolutely cannot afford to become a patron but are eager to join the discussion, email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com. To become a patron go to patreon.com/itsnotjustinyorhead. ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Bethany Morris joins us to talk about critical and community psychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and borderline personality disorder. Dr. Morris is an assistant professor of psychology at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches and does theoretical and qualitative research. She is a transdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges critical psychology, literature, philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, and film studies. Dr. Morris' interview with Mad In America: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/03/feminism-psychoanalysis-critical-psychology-interview-bethany-morris/ Get early access to episodes and extra perks at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead, and email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Sarah and Mo join Max to talk about the many reasons why a universal childcare program in the U.S. would be good for the mental health of children, mothers, parents-generally, families, teachers, and society-at-large. Rooted in her "whole worker" labor organizing struggle in Appalachia (Southwest Virginia) as a childcare worker, Sarah realized that lack of access to quality childcare for working mothers and families, and the low pay and poor working conditions for childcare workers generally, is as much of a crisis in America as is is our lack of affordable healthcare. Mo, a trained doula, professional caseworker, and healthcare organizer, shares some of her insights about the struggles moms can face when they lack access to childcare. Mo recently ran a public good campaign and believes guaranteed childcare is something socialists need to fight for in a member-funded organization as hard as they do for universal healthcare. If you want DSA to make Childcare 4 All a national priority this year, sign the resolution here (must be a DSA member to sign): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16umWek7c7iOYTrTshoWp6SDh6u-cxcQfaDf03zc0E5I/viewform?edit_requested=true Learn more about the DSA Class Unity Caucus at classunity.org. Support our podcast at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead, and contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

In this episode, Harriet gives a broad "macro" zoom out view of what's going on in America right now economically and politically. Next, she zooms in to the "micro" level to look at how our crumbling political economy is impacting people's relationships and individual mental health. Max shares his frustrations around wanting for us to be able to move from "diagnosis" to "treatment" in this context, and both therapists explore possible solutions to the economic and political problems facing all of us today. Get early access to episodes, join our patreon/discord community, and get extra perks by becoming a patron at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead. Contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

We reached out to Migration Policy Institute (MPI) to discuss their research on immigration enforcement and Latino adolescent mental health, resulting in this conversation with their director of research Randy Capps. In this episode, we ask Randy about MPI's research findings on how immigration policies impact the mental health of migrants in the US, with attention to Latino mental health. We ask Randy his thoughts on abolishing ICE, the "open borders" debate, and what kinds of immigration policies would promote the best mental health for migrants in the US. Through email, we asked Randy about how US military and trade interventionism in South America has impacted migration patterns and he made clear he does not know much about this - if you know of researchers with knowledge in this area let us know so we can address that important aspect of US migration and mental health. Also, this episode is more policy focused than usual, and does not draw on personal narratives to help listeners understand the mental health struggles associated with fear of loved ones being deported. If you are someone with such a story and feel comfortable sharing, please email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com. Randy Capps is Director of Research for U.S. Programs at the Migration Policy Institute. His areas of expertise include immigration trends, the unauthorized population, immigrants in the U.S. labor force, the children of immigrants and their well-being, and immigrant health-care and public benefits access and use. Resource: Immigration Enforcement and the Mental Health of Latino High School Students https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-enforcement-mental-health-latino-students_final.pdf Support our podcast at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Fellow mental health counselor Kevin Gallagher joins us to talk about the history of addiction in America, its causes, and cures. Kevin shares  what he learned first-hand about America's broken approaches to addiction treatment while he struggled through his own past addiction, which led him toward intensive research and writing on the history of addiction and why we approach and conceptualize it the way we do today.  Is addiction a moral problem? Why did the "war on drugs" position addiction around (highly racialized) individual criminality? Are people born with "addictive personalities" as a result of defective brains and chemical imbalances? What's missing from today's so-called "trauma informed" approach to addiction popularized by experts such as Gabor Maté? Read Kevin's 10 part Mad In America series "An American History of Addiction" here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/07/history-addiction-ardent-spirits/ - Kevin Gallagher is a former adjunct professor of Psychology and Sociology at Point Park University, in Pittsburgh, PA. He has worked in various community-health settings including four years with the award-winning street medicine program, Operation Safety Net. His work focuses on rethinking mental health, substance use, and addiction from a sociological and social-justice perspective.  He is currently a writer for Mad in America and works in Medicaid clinical quality program development." Contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com Get early access to episodes and other perks at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

In this episode we interview Roy Grinker, cultural anthropologist and author of Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness. His book is broken into three sections: capitalism, wars, and the mind and body. Grinker explains that the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe created the conditions that gave rise to doctors observing "unproductive deviants" within asylums for the first time in history, leading to categorization of different forms of mental suffering based on "clinical observation" and the cultural invention of psychiatry. World Wars I and II had some of the most profound impacts on the development and later global exportation of the DSM and the cultural and ideological assumptions contained within it and the treatment concepts it espouses. Are rates of autism spectrum disorder higher in South Korea? Can a supportive culture "treat" mental problems better than individualistic diagnostic/treatment modalities? What better explains hallucinations and reduces stigma for those who experience them: brain science or supernaturalism? And what's so important about the neurodiversity movement? More on Grinker: https://anthropology.columbian.gwu.edu/roy-richard-grinker Grinker's book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671116/nobodys-normal-by-roy-richard-grinker/ Email us reactions, thoughts, critiques at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com Get early access to episodes and other perks at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

A listener shared with us that they felt that in episode #030 it sounded like we were shaming people who take psych meds. We wanted to clarify our stance with this brief response for anyone who has felt shamed when we speak critically about the pharmaceutical industry and biologically driven approaches to mental health treatment.  ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Max interviews author of the polemical book Virtue Hoarders, Catherine Liu, about the ways the so-called Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) uses fake empathy, mental health language, and superficial discourse on trauma to protect its material interests at the expense of lower wage workers.  The mental health field itself is positioned within the PMC strata and tends to lack class consciousness - part of what sparked the creation of this very podcast. But the PMC as a whole appears to deny any class positionality to the point of dissociation so that it lives in a world of fantasy to explain society, making it "the most delusional class" according to Liu. Near the end, conversations about psychoanalysis and today's cognitive-behavioral "customer satisfaction survey" therapies turn into cackling and managed grief.   Catherine Liu is professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Irvine and the author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/virtue-hoarders The Professional-Managerial Class w/ Catherine Liu | The Jacobin Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4WV7oswt3M The Worst Class ft. Catherine Liu https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/e/176-the-worst-class-ft-catherine-liu/ Wiki's PMC definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional-managerial_class Catherine's references: -Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, Barbara Ehrenreich -Coming Up Short: Working Class Adulthood in An Age of Uncertainty, Jennifer Silva -We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America, Jennifer Silva ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.