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On October 10th, 2018, World Mental Health Day, The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development published a report outlining a proposal to “scale up” mental health care globally. In this podcast series, we discuss the implications.

An interview with Professor Jim van Os who says that, arguably, ‘love is the most powerful evidence-based treatment in mental health’. We discuss his recent paper published in World Psychiatry which envisions a future for mental health that moves away from symptoms and diagnoses and towards peer support and lived experience.

Our desperation to view mental disorder as a disease leads to unhelpful assumptions that it is somehow distinct from the ‘true’ self, encourag[ing] the supposition that it can be treated or cured without changing the individual’s personality. This has led to a huge programme of medically-disguised social engineering, in which people are encouraged to change the way they think and behave, by being persuaded that they have a medical condition that needs to be eliminated.

The concepts we use have undermined our natural resilience, sensitised us to an idea of our vulnerability, and encouraged us to transfer our agency to practitioners who use a system as if it has scientific validity and is clinically useful.

Peter Hacker's magnum opus explores what it means to be human via an analysis of the language we use. Through disclosing the conceptual framework within which we think, act and come to know things, our deep and implicit understanding of ourselves and our world is revealed.