Peter Gordon - Addressing the Divide Between the Arts and Medical Sciences
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 213 Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we interview Dr Peter Gordon. Dr Gordon describes himself as a gardener with an interest in medicine. He trained in both medicine and landscape architecture before specialising in psychiatry and now works with older adults in Scotland. In addition, he is an activist and campaigner and has a range of creative interests including filmmaking, photography, writing and poetry.
In this interview, we walk about Peter's own experiences of psychiatric treatment and how we need to address the divide that exists between the arts and the medical sciences.
In this episode we discuss:
- What led Dr Gordon to have combined interests in the arts and the sciences, training both in architecture and medicine.
- How Peter was interested in the plurality of thinking required for psychiatry as opposed to general medicine.
- How he feels that his training in both the arts and the sciences led to a more rounded appreciation of why purely biological approach might miss opportunities to help people.
- How Peter became an activist, partly in response to the commonly taught subjective/objective diagnostic approach.
- How we should be focussed on the potential of any medical intervention to cause harm and should consider this carefully alongside any potential benefit.
- How we need to take account of all experiences to ensure we provide the maximum benefit and minimum harm to people.
- Peter's own experiences with the mental health system, taking antidepressant drugs and experiencing treatment within a psychiatric hospital.
- How stopping his antidepressant drug resulted in withdrawal effects and led to Peter's only episode of severe depression.
- Why Peter is concerned that we seem to be downplaying the experiences of people who have struggled with psychiatric drugs.
- How Peter's experiences have influenced his approach to prescribing.
- The dominance of the biological approach and why it should not dictate how we respond to individual experiences.
- How the evidence is starting to show that diagnosis can often disempower and bring about 'otherness'.
- Peter's plea for people to be kind to one another and work together to maximise well-being.
Relevant links:
Paroxetine tablets [Film-coated]
Nathan Filer, The Shock of the Fall
To get in touch with us email: podcasts@madinamerica.com
© Mad in America 2018
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice. |
| 0:13.3 | Hello, this is James and welcome to episode 42 of the Mad in America podcast. |
| 0:18.3 | This week, I'm delighted to have had the chance to chat with Dr. Peter |
| 0:21.9 | Gordon. Dr. Gordon describes himself as a gardener with an interest in medicine. He trained in |
| 0:27.3 | both medicine and landscape architecture before specialising in psychiatry and now works with older |
| 0:33.3 | adults in Scotland. In addition, he's an activist and campaigner and has a range of creative |
| 0:38.8 | interests, including filmmaking, photography, writing and poetry. In this interview, we talk about |
| 0:44.6 | Peter's own experiences of psychiatric treatment and how we need to address the divide that |
| 0:49.3 | exists between the arts and the medical sciences. Dr Gordon, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the |
| 0:55.1 | time to chat with me today for the Madden America podcast. And really, it's a little difficult |
| 0:59.4 | to know where to start because you have such a varied range of interests and accomplishments. |
| 1:04.3 | So to begin, I'd like to ask about you, your background, and what led to your fascinating journey |
| 1:09.1 | of training in medicine, architecture and then |
| 1:11.7 | onto psychiatry? Yeah, thank you, James, and thank you for giving me the opportunity of |
| 1:16.7 | talking about myself and my story. Yeah, I'll try and keep this straightforward, though, |
| 1:23.7 | it's anything, but yeah, as a child, was really quite backward but and was quite laid back |
| 1:30.6 | I was able to sleep standing up according to my my granny but I had very wonderful parents and they |
| 1:36.4 | encouraged me in learning and interestingly I was just thinking what was probably one of my |
| 1:41.8 | earliest memories was being pushed in a pram by my mum. |
| 1:44.8 | And I saw up above me in the local shops this gold pot. |
| 1:48.0 | And it was outside of pharmacy, of course. |
| 1:49.8 | But as a wee child, I thought, that's a sweetie pot. |
... |
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