It's Depression Mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here. Those are 10 words I'm pretty comfortable with. I say them every week on the show. Two of the words are my actual name. Another two are the name of the show, so I'm at 40% proper nouns.

It's very reassuring.

I know what all those words mean.

The rest of the words, too, are pretty harmless.

No one's going to feel degraded or disrespected by them.

None of the words imply prejudice on my part or point to unfair stereotyping. I think I'm good so far.

I think I'm well so far. Anyway, because we are an evolving species and an evolving society,

some words and phrases rise into favor and some fall out of favor. That can especially be the

case in mental health. We don't call

someone a lunatic or a madman anymore if they have a mental health issue. At least we mustn't.

It's archaic and cruel, and you often find that some outdated terms are just very vague. Madman? So to use words that are outdated means using

words that have already failed twice before, even coming out of your mouth. They lack basic

courtesy and they fail to convey specific meanings. Words in mental health change fast. The term

nervous breakdown has lost favor in the mental health

community. We talked a few weeks ago on this show about how multiple personality disorder has

been replaced by practitioners by the somewhat more precise dissociative identity disorder.

So we'll talk about words today. In a little while, I'll speak with Dr. Casera

Diet. She's a therapist in the Boston area. But first, Helen Salzman.

Helen Saltzman is here. She's a linguist. She's hosted the illusionist podcast. You may have heard her hosting the Veronica Mars Investigations and Answer Me This Podcast. Perhaps you've heard her on Bullseye here on Maximum Fun. Look, I don't know where you know Helen from, but I know her from being here on the show.

Helen Zaltzman, hello.

Hello.

Yeah, maybe you know me from muttering at you in your sleep.

...