Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Jussi Valtonen is a neuropsychologist, an adjunct researcher with the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopedics (FICEBO), a professor of writing at the University of the Arts Helsinki, and a columnist for the Finnish Medical Journal. He works clinically as a neuropsychologist, and his research and writing sit at the crossroads of mind and brain through the health humanities.
Jussi is an award-winning novelist as well. His novel They Know Not What They Do won Finland's top literary prize and has been translated into multiple languages. Alongside his scholarly work, he leads the Health, Narrative, and the Arts initiative at Uniarts Helsinki, which offers training in narrative skills for professionals in healthcare and social work and brings literary, artistic, and humanistic ways of thinking into conversation with clinical care.
In this conversation, we turn to Jussi's recent work helping to build narrative medicine groups in Finland, first with clinicians and now increasingly with neurological patients, as well as to his broader effort to show why the humanities are one of the rare places where clinicians and patients alike can recover forms of attention, listening, interpretation, and moral imagination that dehumanized healthcare systems work to erode.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850
© Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Born in Germany and raised in Denmark, Fiona Frenzen is a qualified teacher with a master's degree in anthropology. For years, she had a dream about living in Iceland, seeking the grounding and healing effect of nature. But due to her health challenges and severe withdrawal syndrome, this dream seemed unrealistic. However, this past fall, she moved to a rural part of Iceland where she began teaching at the local elementary and high school.
She dreams about putting her degree in anthropology to use by working in research and contributing to the awareness of the risks of antidepressants and the difficulties of withdrawal.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850
© Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Marsha Zaritsky is a licensed mental health therapist certified in Internal Family Systems.
She joins us to explain how her experience with polypharmacy and psychiatric drug withdrawal has changed and informed how she practices.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850
© Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Eric Jarvis is a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University whose work brings attention to areas often overlooked in mainstream psychiatry, including religion, coercion, the social determinants of psychosis, and culture. He directs the Cultural Consultation Service, the First Episode Psychosis Program, and the Culture and Psychosis Working Group at the Jewish General Hospital, and is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry. His research looks closely at how religious belief, spiritual practice, moral worlds, language, migration, racism, and social context shape how people experience distress, meaning, and healing.
In this conversation, we explore how faith, culture, and power shape mental health practice. We discuss Jarvis's work on religion and spirituality in cultural psychiatry, his research on culture and the social causes of psychosis, and his studies of coercion in first-episode psychosis.
We also talk about category fallacies, looping effects, and what happens when biomedical explanations of suffering collide with spiritual, familial, and community-based understandings of distress.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850
© Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Beatrice Birch is the Founder and Director of Inner Fire, a residential program in rural Vermont, which is unique in one particular way. It provides support for tapering from psychiatric drugs, including antipsychotics, which is an essential aspect of the therapy.
In this interview, Beatrice introduces Inner Fire, tells us about the programme and staff and explains how kindling our inner fire can hold up a mirror that tells people they are worthy and valuable.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850
© Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org