Episode 8 of Season 2 of the Mental Horizons Podcast is with Benedict Carey, science and medical writer for the New York Times. Ben has been a science writer since his first job out of journalism school in 1987, writing for the San Francisco-based medical science magazine, Hippocrates.
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For the New York Times, Ben has published numerous articles about mental illness and is the author of the 2015 book, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens.
Listen to his podcast here:
Scientific American reviewed his book, saying, “How We Learn is more than a new approach to learning; it is a guide to making the most out of life. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?”
Among many awards, Ben was a recipient of the 2016 Erik Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. He is a long-time friend of those who care about individuals with mental illness and has joined with them is seeking to find and report on emerging solutions.
In the podcast, we first hear from Ben on being a journalistic leader in the mental health field. Then Ben and Virgil address three main talking points:
1) Focusing more on the conditions of mental health recovery rather than on the diagnosing of “mental illness”.
2) Actual recovery comes from adaptation and experimentation.
3) The real experts are the psychiatric veterans: we need to listen more to those who have been “set back” by mental health challenges and learn from how they have managed their recovery.