All In The Mind

Medical anthropologist Monique Skidmore has conducted field work in Burma for over a decade, carefully probing the ways the state manipulates the emotional life of the Burmese, and the psychological strategies they adopt to survive under a military regime. Fear threads through every conversation and gesture. Also, updates from a health worker in the longstanding refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border. The mental health challenges are immense.

The Internet is celebrated and castigated in equal measure -- but is it good for your mental health? Are you compelled to check your email morning, night and day? Some believe Internet Addiction Disorder is a very real and growing concern. Others aren't at all convinced it exists. Also, the rise of psychological therapies online -- from depression to social phobia or bulimia -- can a computer really replace your therapist?

Psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was on South Africa's historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chairing many of its tortuous public hearings about atrocities committed in the apartheid era. In an unprecedented dialogue she met with one of apartheid's most abhorrent killers, in jail, to explore forgiveness, psychological redemption and the symbolic language of trauma. She joins Natasha Mitchell in a feature interview.

Lover or carer? Partner or dependant? This week, when a partner is afflicted with a severe mental illness, how is the relationship redefined? Do they feel like the body and soul you first fell in love with? Two couples -- Lana and Paul, Gerard and Brendon -- share the trials and triumphs of confronting illness and prejudice together.

Gut feelings, hunches - some people swear by them to make the really big decisions in life. But is there really anything to the idea of trusting a deep, inner sense? Or is intuition little more than superstition? From jam tasting to speed dating - a sceptical neuroscientist delves. Please note: the podcast for this week is a highlight from our archives, not this show which is a feature produced by BBC Radio 4 that cannot be podcast for copyright reasons. The transcript and mp3 audio download for the replacement podcast program are available here.

From terrorist threats to bushfire anxiety, the rise of panic disorders to political game play - are we living in an era of fear? A world leader in psychopath research; a personality psychologist, top political scientists; and author of The Chemical Weapons Taboo join Natasha Mitchell to take on a hot topic of the times. The good, the bad and the ugly of that visceral human emotion - Fear.

Where does the Self go when it is battered and bruised beyond recognition? Traumatized after head injury; altered through autism; deconstructed by delusion? TV columnist Ruth Ritchie and neuropsychologist Dr Paul Broks join Natasha Mitchell to navigate the wilderness from very different perspectives, and opposite sides of the doctor's table.

Your brain hijacked -- possessed by a chronic, relapsing brain disease. Scientists now view addiction as a disease, not a behavioural problem. Brain circuits involved in reward and pleasure, planning and control are dramatically changed. The priority is medical treatment, not shame and blame. But others challenge what they dub the 'disease rhetoric', arguing it's fatalistic and reductionist. Do we treat the brain, or the person? And, should we surrender control to the addicted brain?

Being gay was considered a mental disorder by psychiatry - until 1973 - when the battle lines were drawn. In this final episode, reporter Alix Spiegel continues the gripping story that spurred a radical rethink. It's the story of a closeted cartel of powerful, gay psychiatrists; of confrontations with angry activists; a shrink dressed in a Nixon mask, and a pivotal encounter in a Hawaiian bar. From Chicago Public Radio's This American Life.

Homosexuality was once labelled a mental disease by psychiatry. But in 1973 the challenge came from within. The American Psychiatric Association had a change of heart. And with the tweak of the 81-word definition of sexual deviance in its own diagnostic manual, lives were reclaimed, and values confronted. Reporter and narrator Alix Spiegel tells the gripping story from the inside, revealing the activities of a closeted group of gay psychiatrists who sowed the seeds of change, amongst them her own grandfather, president-elect of the APA at the time. From Chicago Public Radio's This American Life.