Lucas Richert - Psychiatry and the Counterculture
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 212 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2021
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
Lucas Richert is the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and historical director for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His work explores prescription and illicit drugs, the American counterculture, and the influence of various power structures within and beyond psychiatry.
As a scholar of the pharmaceutical industry, Richert encountered a trove of historical documents that talked about the self-described radicals in mental health from the 1970s. "They cared about relevant issues, things that we talk about right now: racism, the environment, militarism, and political division. It really grabbed hold of me when I got these documents, they were a catalyst." This project turned into his 3rd book, Break on Through: Radical psychiatry and the American counterculture in which he examines the tumultuous 1970s in America with a focus "not just on the elite doctors and people in positions of power, but also wider societal trends."
In addition to Break on Through, Richert has published A Prescription for Scandal: Conservatism, consumer choice, and the food and drug administration during the Reagan era and Strange Trips: Science culture, and the regulation of drugs. His fourth book, Cannabis: Global Histories, will be available later this year (2021).
In this interview, we will discuss the radical landscape of American psychiatry in the 1970s, "therapeutic" and "non-therapeutic" drugs and how they are classified as such, and feminist critiques of psychiatric institutions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice. |
| 0:13.0 | Hello, and welcome to the Madden America podcast. I'm Richard Sears, science writer from Madden America. |
| 0:18.7 | I'm here today with Dr. Lucas Rickert, the George Erding |
| 0:22.0 | Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and historical director |
| 0:26.9 | for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. He's published several books, including |
| 0:31.8 | a prescription for scandal, conservatism, consumer choice, and the Food and Drug Administration |
| 0:36.3 | during the Reagan era, strange trips, science, culture, and the Food and Drug Administration during the Reagan era, |
| 0:43.9 | strange trips, science, culture, and the regulation of drugs, and most recently break on through radical psychiatry and the American counterculture. His fourth book, Cannabis, Global Histories, |
| 0:50.4 | will be available later this year. Welcome, Dr. Rickert, and thank you for speaking with us today. |
| 0:55.5 | Hey, thanks for the invite. All right, so we're just going to jump right in. First, I just wanted to |
| 1:01.5 | ask you about what brought you to the discipline of pharmacy and psychiatry. Yeah, sure. I mean, |
| 1:09.6 | I guess first off, Richard, |
| 1:11.3 | thanks for having this conversation with me. |
| 1:13.6 | It's always nice to share my ideas and thoughts and work. |
| 1:19.1 | And I really enjoyed contributing to Mad in America. |
| 1:22.7 | I respect what you guys are doing. |
| 1:24.7 | And hopefully I can write for you more in the future. |
| 1:29.3 | You know, the history of psychiatry and mental health has often been a really big draw |
| 1:36.0 | for professional historians and the public more generally, and that includes me. |
| 1:43.7 | So I think the subject area is just by nature, |
| 1:48.7 | incredibly important and incredibly fascinating, |
| 1:52.4 | especially now in the midst of this pandemic. |
... |
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