#754 Jerome Wakefield: What is a Mental Disorder?; Depression, and Anxiety
RECORDED ON NOVEMBER 30th 2022.
Dr. Jerome Wakefield is a Professor at NYU Silver as well as an NYU University Professor with multidisciplinary appointments, particularly affiliate faculty in Philosophy and affiliate faculty in Bioethics. Dr. Wakefield’s scholarly specialty is the conceptual foundations of clinical theory. Much of his recent work has concerned the concept of mental disorder, especially how normal negative responses to a problematic social environment can be distinguished from mental disorder and how DSM diagnostic criteria fail to adequately draw this distinction. He’s the author of several books, including The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder, and All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders.
In this episode, we talk about the concept of mental disorder, depression, and anxiety. After addressing the issues with the definition of mental disorder, we tackle depression, and discuss how to distinguish it from sadness and sorrow; if it is really on the rise; what we know about its biology; and if and how psychotherapy and antidepressants work. We then get into anxiety, its evolved functions; and criticisms about the diagnostic criteria for generalized anxiety. Finally, we discuss potential issues in modern industrialized societies that might contribute to depression and anxiety, and if normal anxiety and depression should be treated clinically.
Time Links:
Intro
What is mental disorder?
What is depression?
How to distinguish depression from sadness and sorrow
Is depression really on the rise?
The biological factors behind depression
Psychotherapy and antidepressants: do they work?
The functions of anxiety
The diagnostic criteria for generalized anxiety
Potential issues in modern industrialized societies
Should normal anxiety and depression be treated?
Follow Dr. Wakefield’s work!
Follow Dr. Wakefield’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/2YIEBDT
Works on ResearchGate: https://bit.ly/31S6VF3
The Loss of Sadness: http://bit.ly/3AXgfq3
All We Have to Fear: http://bit.ly/3FcJ18q
Amazon page: http://bit.ly/3FhhN0G