everything is mental.

My guest for Episode #11 is Member of Parliament, Matt Jeneroux.

Matt is the Conservative Member of Parliament representing Edmonton Riverbend, and a former Member of the Alberta Legislative Assembly.

In January 2020, Matt was named the Shadow Minister of Health. In this role, Matt worked with Canada’s health stakeholders on pertinent files, including COVID-19.

Currently, Matt is a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. 

Matt is a passionate advocate for mental health initiatives with a particular focus on addressing the stigma of mental health in young men.

Matt and I covered a wide range of topics – politics, men’s mental health, publicly funded psychotherapy, psychedelic medicine as a treatment for mental illness, Covid-19, and for good measure, Universal Basic Income.

I hope you enjoy.

*Please forgive the poor audio on my end for this episode*

My guest today is Dr. Tyler Black.

Tyler is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Suicidologist who has been in clinical practice for over ten years. He is the Medical Director of Emergency Psychiatry at BC Children's Hospital. On top of clinical duties, he is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of British Columbia, and a researcher specializing in suicidology, psychopharmacology, and video games. Tyler is the co-creator of the HEARTSMAP (www.openheartsmap.ca), a psychosocial assessment and guidance tool for youth in emergency departments, and the creator of the ASARI (Assessment of Suicide And Risk Inventory), a documentation tool for clinicians who are assessing or noticing suicide risk.

Tyler and I spoke about the impact of school closures on youth mental health; the politicization of suicide during covid 19; the ineffectiveness of suicide prevention programs; and the future prospects of psychiatry. 

Enjoy!

Believing that you should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans, Ronan has built a career out of doing things that others say cannot be done. Ronan started his career as a securities lawyer at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP but left that after realizing he was much too creative for the profession of law.

Since then, Ronan has helped launch business across a number of industries from gold, to cannabis, and, most recently, in psychedelics where he is a Co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Field Trip Health Ltd. (CSE: FTRP, OTCBB: FTRPF), a global leader in the development and delivery of psychedelic therapies. When not being thoroughly incorrigible, Ronan lives in Toronto with his wife and two children.

Ronan and I discussed his entrepreneurial journey on the bleeding edge of healthcare; his belief in trading your cow for a handful of magic beans; and, why being a stern foe for all sham serves as his north star.

Oh, we also discussed mental health, Field Trip, and the future of healthcare.

Enjoy!

The long-awaited return of Cody Lakevold, for part two of our conversation has arrived.

It’s not entirely necessary to listen to our first podcast (Ep. 1) but would be helpful for following the thread during this conversation.  It also helps with my download numbers, which of course, supersedes any value one might gain from this conversation.

Cody follows up from our first discussion by navigating us through his journey to address the tragic losses he experienced in his life, and shares the various treatment modalities he pursued: EDMR, psychotherapy, and lastly MDMA with augmented psychotherapy—an approach that, I think it’s safe to say, gave him his life back

We also talked about the state of well-being in our society today, notions such as anti-fragility, the over-medicalization of mental illness, and other sub-optimal wellness pathways our society is trending towards today.

Please note:  None of the following should be taken as medical advice. 

Also, brace yourself for some new CTM intro music — it’s going to hit you like a Rob Lovelace (google him) punch to the solar plexus.

In This Episode I had the honour of speaking with Dr. David Nutt

David is a psychiatrist and professor of neuroscience who specializes in studying the impact of drugs on the human brain.

In 2010, The Times Eureka Science Magazine included David in the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist.

David was famously fired as drug advisor to the British Government in the early 2000s for stating in a research paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

David and I had a wide ranging conversation about his career; his public dismissal as government drug advisor; various drugs and their effects on the brain; as well as his current drug research looking at effects of psilocybin on depression.

What a beauty!

In this episode, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Allen Frances.

Dr. Frances is an American psychiatrist best known for chairing the DSM-IV taskforce, and later roundly criticizing the DSM-5 and American psychiatry for their roles in manufacturing mental illnesses and the epidemic of over-diagnosis. 

He has been the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University where he is currently serving as Professor Emeritus. He has written a number of books including, Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Diagnosis, The DSM-5 and Big Pharma; Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump; and Essentials of Psychiatric Diagnosis.

Dr. Frances is an outspoken critic of the industrial-medical complex and the marginalization and mistreatment of disenfranchised consumers of medical care. 

In this episode, Dr. Frances and I discuss the shortcomings of the DSM; the over-diagnoses problems in psychiatry; resilience in the age of COVID-19, and the emergence and cautionary tales of psychedelic medicine.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Anne Harrington is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.

We spent the duration of the episode discussing themes outlined in her book 'Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental illness', a book that highlights psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

In this episode, I had the good fortune of speaking with Edmonton City Centre MLA, David Shepherd.   David was first elected in 2015, and recently re-elected in 2019.  David is currently the Health Critic for the Alberta NDP, a very important role given everything that is happening in the world right now.

David and I spoke about his journey, and the winding road he’s travelled, to better understand and manage his mental health.

We also spoke about the current mental healthcare system, or as we both agreed to call it “the current non-system, system” and the role that government and the public can collectively play to help design a system so it works better for its users.

"It's okay to not be okay".

In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with my friend, Edmonton City Councillor, Scott McKeen. 

Authentic; genuine; real -- three words that come to mind when I think of the good Councillor.

Scott has been a passionate advocate for our most vulnerable populations in Edmonton.  In 2013, he launched a Mental Health and Urban Isolation initiative through the City of Edmonton.  He has also been leading affordable housing and harm reduction strategies.

Scott has also been very open about his own lived experience with anxiety, depression and addiction. 

During this episode Scott and I had a wide ranging conversation, jumping back and forth between his own lived experiences, to societal challenges we face today.

In this episode, I spoke with Sanjay Singhal.  Sanjay is a Toronto based entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. 

I spoke with Sanjay about dealing with his bi-polar diagnosis early on in his entrepreneurial journey; about the challenges he confronted with the healthcare system while trying to access appropriate treatment for his daughter’s eating disorder; how he got involved in funding psychedelic medicine, and lastly, the work he is now doing with his Foundation, The Nikean Foundation. Through the Nikean Foundation (nikean.org), Sanjay, along with the likes of Tim Ferris, was one of the five founding funders of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College in London.

It was a fascinating conversation, and I am deeply appreciative to Sanjay for speaking with me and being so open about his lived experiences.