About Mad Waters - A Parents' Odyssey Through the Mental Health System
Even as practitioners, we didn't know how broken the mental health system was...until our child became part of it. On the Mad Waters podcast, we ask leaders like Rachel Yehuda, Allen Frances, and Maia Szalavitz what they are doing to change it.
Mad Waters is a voice among many that seeks to purge the stigma, shame, alienation and fear surrounding mental health to find what is common and what is eternal – a desire for connection, with each other and with our true self.
S2E7 - Unpacking Addiction - Interview with Dr. Nathan Sackett
Mortality deaths in adolescents due to unintentional overdoses reached an all-time high in 2020. The majority of deaths (81%) were due to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. About 41% of those who overdosed had a prior history of mental health.Yet, more often than not, we treat substance use and mental illness separately. Addressing mental illness and substance dependence requires ‘out of the box’ thinking. Our guest is one of those leading this charge as he explores alternative treatment interventions like psychedelic associated therapy.
Interview with Nathan Sackett, MD, co-director of the Center for Novel Therapeutics in Addiction Psychiatry at the University of Washington.
13 Dec 2023
S2E6 - We Are Not In Normal Times - Interview with Dr. Kenneth Thompson
“Efforts are being made to reach underserved communities.” A cry so familiar, it sounds more like a platitude than a plan. Yet, we still accept it as the necessary and sufficient answer to much of our healthcare woes. What if it isn’t? What if all of our dollars and initiatives are directed at the wrong target? The answer, it turns out, may not be about healthcare at all.
a public service psychiatrist and former medical director of the Center for Mental Health Services at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
29 Nov 2023
S2E5 - The Kids Are Not Alright - Interview with Dr. Jared Taylor
There was a collective sigh heard round the world when children went back to school after the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, we were unprepared for what came next - an explosion of physical fights, skyrocketing anxiety, depression, and unprecedented refusal to even go back to school. This, on top of the fact that there is a severe school counselor shortage across America. If schools couldn’t tackle this with more staff, they would need innovation and skilled leadership. One district, our very own in fact, showed how it could be done.
Interview with Dr. Jared Taylor, the coordinator of behavior interventions and mental health services of the Bellevue School District, serving close to 20,000 students.
15 Nov 2023
S2E4 - Siren Song - Interview with Dr. Anna Lembke
The opioid crisis is making headlines and demanding the attention of policy makers, Emergency Rooms, addiction specialists, and law enforcement. As it should. What about the insidious, even more pervasive addiction that is right in front of all of our eyes? The “modern-day hypodermic needle” that delivers hits of pleasure 24/7. Our brains were not built for this and the result is an epidemic of people in a state of dopamine withdrawal, more commonly known as depression and anxiety. Finding out how to achieve balance among overconsumption is the battle our guest is finding out how to win.
Interview with Dr. Anna Lembke, Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University.
1 Nov 2023
S2E3 - Autism’s Gender Bias - Interview with Dr. Cynthia Gordon
Autism is a tricky diagnosis to make sometimes. It can present in numerous ways that don’t fall into classic presentations. Take this problem and now multiply it. What you get is the challenge in diagnosing Autism in girls. As we begin to recognize what we’ve been missing, a new variant of Autism may be making diagnosis even more difficult. For some, though, it may finally be the answer they’ve been looking for.
Interview with Dr. Cynthia Martin, the Senior Clinical Director and a psychologist in the Autism Center at New York City’s Child Mind Institute.
18 Oct 2023
S2E2 - The Superpower of Babies - Interview with Mary Gordon
From the moment babies enter the world, they are being taught. Taught to identify colors, shapes, numbers, letters. Later, they learn to read, to swim, to ride a bike. They arrive wired to learn. What if these same babies were even better teachers? In a time when we are experiencing an empathy deficit manifested in political tribalism, workplace hostility, school violence, it may be the tiniest among us that can bring us the greatest hope.
Interview with Mary Gordon, an award-winning social entrepreneur, educator, and best-selling author, who has created an international children’s charity: Roots of Empathy (ROE).
4 Oct 2023
S2E1 - Can't Find My Way Home - Interview with Dr. Ken Duckworth
“What is the difference being a mother of a child with mental illness and the mother of a child who might have heart disease or cancer?” That was the question posed on a 60 Minutes episode by Scott Pelley. The answer was sympathy and… casseroles. While communities often rally around families with physically sick children, a combination of stigma, fear and ignorance often coalesce to leave families isolated and ashamed. This may finally be changing and the reason, recognizing the power and lessons of those who’ve lived it.
Interview with Dr. Ken Duckworth, MD, the chief medical officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Ken is the author of NAMI’s first book, 'You Are Not Alone: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Mental Health'.
9 May 2022
S1E7 - Modern Hermits - Interview with Dr. Alan Teo
Few have experienced the kind of isolation that Covid-19 brought with it. Although mandated for our collective health, it wreaked havoc on our mental health. Since the 1980’s, Japan has seen social withdrawal to the extreme with a group of primarily young men known as hikikomori. They refuse face-to-face contact for years and sometimes decades. As we emerge from the pandemic, what lessons do these modern hermits have for us?
Dr. Alan Teo is a psychiatrist and health services researcher at the Oregon Health & Science University. He is an international expert in Hikikomori and a core investigator at the VA HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care at the VA Portland Health Care System. His focus is on depression and suicide prevention and how social connections can influence mental health.
9 May 2022
S1E6 - Surviving the Inconceivable - Interview with Dr. Akhtar Badshah
Covid-19 exposed fault lines in our culture, our education, and our healthcare. Burn-out spread like wildfire among those on the front lines and set the stage for what is now being called, the Great Resignation. Can we care for the sick if, as corporations, a government, a society, we are not truly caring for the well?
Dr. Akhtar Badshah is an internationally recognized expert on social impact, philanthropy and international development. For 10 years, he led Microsoft's global philanthropic efforts administering the company’s community investment and employee programs. He actively engages and challenges business and technology leaders to become catalysts to social change and is the author of The Purpose Mindset: How Microsoft Inspires Employees and Alumni to Change the World.
9 May 2022
S1E5 - A Matter of Life or Death - Interview with Doug Reuter
Imagine you are ill and that part of the malady, is not knowing it. Imagine that the result of this is not only to get worse. It is potentially fatal.That is exactly the scenario in which a small percentage of those with mental illness find themselves and for those who love them, the choices to get help are excruciating and in some cases, pose ethical and legal dilemmas that even experts are hard pressed to answer.
Doug Reuter has been a legislator in the Minnesota House of Representatives, a sailor in the US Navy and an inventor of a world renowned board game. He is also a parent who lobbied for 2 years for the passage of Joel’s Law, allowing a family member to petition to have their loved one involuntarily committed after his son Joel died at the hands of the Seattle police, ‘defending himself against zombies.’
9 May 2022
S1E4 - The Undertow - Interview with Maia Szalavitz
How can parents ever justify sending their child away in the name of getting help? That was the question we asked for years until we found ourselves pulled into that same position. Residential Treatment Centers, as they are called, are a last resort for parents but for thousands of children and adolescents who’ve experienced them, they can be places of abuse, neglect or worse. Why should help, ever mean saying ‘good-bye?’
Maia Szalavitz is a N.Y. Times bestselling author whose book, Help at Any Cost exposed the frightening and tragic world of residential treatment. She has written for numerous publications from The Washington Post to The Atlantic— and is author or co-author of six other books including two written with Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, a distinction she now shares with Oprah Winfrey.
9 May 2022
S1E3 - Snow White In Therapy - Interview with Kristen Arquette
The mother-child bond has had a central role in therapy and psychological theory since the beginning. Mothers are at once the source of love and a target of blame for their child’s well being. Can we separate the science of attachment from the fairy tales we’ve all grown up with?
Kristen Arquette is a licensed marriage and family therapist and substance use disorder professional who specializes in evidence-based and data driven therapies. Her expertise has been featured in The Washington Post, Family Education.Com and American Teen Magazine. She is one of the most skilled practitioners we’ve ever worked with.
9 May 2022
S1E2 - The Crystal Ball of Genetics - Interview with Dr. Rachel Yehuda
The night I met my future father-in-law was scary as hell. It was a phone call that began as civil and devolved into insults, profanity and finally threats. I’d only known this kind of person through movies or books. My husband -to-be, had grown up with him. So, what? I thought. I was marrying the son, not the father.
In the age of 23 and Me or Ancestry.com, what do we really know about who we are, how we got this way, and the effect it has on our parenting?
Dr. Rachel Yehuda is a pioneer in the study of traumatic stress. She is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is also Director of Mental Health at the Bronx VA Medical Center and Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Program at Mount Sinai. More recently, she spearheaded Mount Sinai’s Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research.
9 May 2022
S1E1 - In Exile - Interview with Dr. Allen Frances
Our child had always been drawn to the water. As we stood on an old bridge overlooking the shifting tides of Chalkida, Greece, it was painfully apparent that despite our best intentions, what had led to this moment had been anathema to the physician’s creed of ‘do no harm.’ Would this place provide a panacea or would it be just another form of exile?
28 Mar 2022
Mad Waters Trailer
Even as practitioners, we didn't know how broken the mental health system was...until our child became part of it. On the Mad Waters podcast, we ask leaders like Rachel Yehuda, Allen Frances, and Maia Szalavitz what they are doing to change it.
New episodes coming soon.
To contact the show, reach out to madwaterspodcast@gmail.com
Learn more at madwaterspodcast.com
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Contact Mad Waters - A Parents' Odyssey Through the Mental Health System
Guest appearances
Does not typically book guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Mad Waters - A Parents' Odyssey Through the Mental Health System?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
