Our mental health heavily influences our quality of life, so it makes sense that mental health, just like physical health, needs to be taken care of and maintained. One way that it can be maintained is through finding a sense of community, however, the way we are living today in Western society has created a big problem of loneliness. 60% of Americans report they don’t have a single person to go to in a time of crisis and in a struggle. This disconnection from one another has created endemic loneliness and isolation for many people. Loneliness has been shown to have similar health effects as smoking, or being overweight. The progressive disconnection from ourselves and other human beings is at the root of the problem with the way we are living.

On today’s Broken Brain Podcast, our host Dhru talks to Dr. Omid Naim, a Western-trained psychiatrist who came to see the need for more holistic, spiritual, and community-based approaches to health care, by seeing the limitations of the conventional model first hand. He completed General Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry residency at the University of California San Francisco, and went on to work in community psychiatry with the most high-risk and severely ill youth in the county coming out of foster care. Dr. Naim is the founder of Hope Integrative Psychiatry, a multi-modal approach for whole person transformation and healing. He also founded the non-profit, La Maida Project, which designs new models for families, communities, and organizations to become ecosystems of optimal health and well-being based on our innate human nature. 

In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Naim talk about why society is so sick, what is contributing to the epidemic of mental health disorders, and how we need a new model for addressing chronic health conditions. They discuss how unresolved trauma and grief underlie most chronic health conditions. They also talk about what it really means to be in community and how we have an innate capacity to heal under proper conditions.

In this episode, we dive into: 

-The current state of society in America and the real problem of loneliness (1:51)

-How our stories shape us (11:02)

-The birth of the nuclear family and the rise of mental illness (13:32) 

-How anxiety, distress, and body pains are an expression of what we’re holding onto (14:53)

-What community really means and the core conflicts of modern life (18:03)

-How disasters and crisis bring out the best in us, and how we heal through connection (24:27)

-The power of purpose and the healing process (35:27) 

-Unresolved childhood trauma and mental health disorders (41:59)

-The influence of culture and society on mental health (49:21)

-Where listeners can learn more about Dr. Omid Naim (58:23)

For more on Dr. Omid Naim you can follow him on Instagram @LaMaidaProject, on Facebook @LaMaidaProject, and through his websites https://www.hopepsychiatry.com/ and https://lamaidaproject.org/.

Also mentioned in this episode:

-Broken Brain Podcast Episode #20 - Depression and Trauma: Looking Beyond Medications with Dr. Omid Naim - https://drhyman.com/blog/2018/09/14/bb-ep20/

-Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger

-The True Believer: Thoughts on The Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer - https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

-Study: Older People Are More Likely to Spread Fake News - https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-01-09/study-older-people-are-more-susceptible-to-fake-news-more-likely-to-share-it

-Researchers Examine When People Are More Susceptible to Fake News - https://www.npr.org/2017/07/18/537844762/researchers-examine-when-people-are-more-susceptible-to-fake-news

For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at (302) 200-5643 or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit.

Interested in joining Dhru’s Broken Brain Podcast Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/.

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