Make a Recommendation Monday [8/17/2020]:
This week's recommendation is a TED talk by one of my favorite speakers and a true inquisitive mind. Johann Hari, is a world-traveling journalist, author, speaker, and advocate, who discusses his understanding and insights on anxiety and depression.
[Photo credit: TEDSummit 2019 Johann Hari "This could be why you're depressed or anxious"]
Hari has his own personal experience with depression and anxiety, including seeking treatment and ongoing challenges. He also sought out a plethora of knowledge from professionals around the world to help him formulate his own conclusions and connections between the information and his own life experiences.
In this talk, Hari talks about how depression is NOT just genetic, but has many experiential/environmental causes. He also stresses that medications, although helpful in many cases, are not the only form of treatment or intervention. He discusses how we have become consumers of "junk values" which impacts us in the same way that ingesting junk food does -- poor health and cheap "fixes". Hari offers hope for everyone, both those experiencing depression and those with loved ones experiencing it.
Hari has also written two books, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression--and the Unexpected Solutions (2018) and Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (2015).
Check out his TED Talk titled "This could be why you're depressed or anxious" from 2019: https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_this_could_be_why_you_re_depressed_or_anxious?language=en
A talk for everyone, this is such an important topic and necessary discussion. It will have even the most well-read person in the psychology or mental health field learning and changing their perspectives on mental illness and mental health.
For more information on his books, you can visit: https://thelostconnections.com/ or https://chasingthescream.com/. Stay tuned for a future post about another TED Talk by him...
As always, thank you for reading! I hope to hear from you in terms of your thoughts or questions on this post. Also, I always welcome general discussions through my social media pages (Facebook and Instagram), email neurolawgical@gmail.com, or this site's contact form.