All In The Mind

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly (makers of Prozac) have agreed to pay upwards of 1.2 billion US dollars to nearly 30,000 patients who claim their bestseller antipsychotic medication, Zyprexa (Olanzapine) has resulted in diabetes, weight gain and other complications and that these risks were downplayed. Secret documents are leaked, the newspaper headlines start screaming, and citizen journalists spread the word - but where is the real advocacy for better drugs with fewer side effects?

They survive civil war, refugee camps, dispossession, enforced resettlement. Yet nothing can quite prepare a refugee for the challenge of adapting to life in a new and foreign home. This week, are the world's refugees at increased risk of drug and alcohol use and abuse? What's the international evidence, and what interventions work? Members of Australia's Sudanese community share their own concerns.

Lead in paint. Methylmercury in fish. Arsenic in groundwater. Just some of the toxic insults on our vulnerable brains. But are they the thin end of the industrial chemical wedge? Could the world's children be experiencing a silent pandemic in neurodevelopmental disorders? Harvard's Professor Phillipe Grandjean thinks so, and joins Deborah Cory-Slechta at Rutgers University to unpick the latest compelling science. Don't miss two of the world's trailblazers in neurotoxicology.

Your brain is a resilient organ, but vulnerable to nasty environmental insults too. This week, in the first of two shows navigating our neurotoxic world: it's been dubbed 'Chemofog' and 'Chemobrain' by cancer survivors: short-term memory loss, foggy thoughts, fatigue - lingering sometimes years after chemotherapy. Could chemo be doing more than killing off cancer cells? New research suggests it may be more toxic to your nerve cells than cancer itself. Natasha Mitchell investigates.

Mind. Brain. Are they the same thing, or is the mind something special? The conundrum has perplexed us for centuries. Descartes split the two - into a spiritual, soul-like mind and fleshly, material brain. But in 1956 a group of 'renegade' Oxford graduates Down Under, now international stars in philosophy, launched a challenge. Consciousness and the brain were united, and any talk of mental spooks and ghosts in the machine was out...almost. Now in their 80s, David Armstrong and Jack Smart and others reminisce on taking Descartes to task.

Repeated unwanted advances, being followed, distressing packages and letters in the mail, relentless phone calls and emails - this can all be part of the terrifying experience of being stalked. It's a social problem that's increasing and doesn't just happen to celebrities. What motivates stalkers? The latest research from forensic psychiatry, and one woman's devastating account of the impact a persistent stalker has had on her life.

As the world wages war over geographical, religious and historical turf - a growing number of big note scientists want religious faith put under the microscope. Uber-philosopher of mind and popular provocateur, Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, is one of them. He joins Natasha Mitchell to discuss his latest controversial offering, Breaking the Spell. Be provoked...

Northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Columbia. Some of the world's conflicted countries where young children are recruited, or violently abducted, to serve as soldiers. Two psychologists at the coalface, and a teenage abductee, join Natasha Mitchell to discuss the complex psychology of child recruitment, reintegration and repatriation. Little innocents or self-aware agents? A confronting issue that's not straightforward. Stories of hope prevail too.

The pressure to be thin is more intense than ever, and with around 80% of teenage girls going on diets, some slide down the slippery slope into anorexia nervosa. Our knowledge of this puzzling disorder remains limited, but some inroads of understanding are being made into what occurs in the starving brain. Lynne Malcolm reports on the latest scientific research, and meets a young woman on the path to recovery who gives a moving insight into her experience. First broadcast 25 March 2006.

Until the 18th century, epilepsy was associated with the supernatural or seen as the work of the Devil, and it continues to be surrounded by social stigma. There's still a hard core of sufferers who aren't helped by medication - despite the plethora of new drugs under development. Meet a brave young girl who turned to brain surgery after years of daily, debilitating seizures, a woman whose life has been transformed by a nerve stimulator implanted in her chest, and a geneticist who gives us hope for the future.