This psychiatrist, who has worked inside both the pharmaceutical industry and academic medicine, lays out what he calls "capture," the financial and career incentives that push researchers toward pharmaceutical funding over independent sources. Publications, conference travel, and research grants from drug companies are, in his words, "a thousand times easier" to secure than government funding, and early in an academic career, that becomes the fast track to promotion. He argues this has entrenched a model of mental health that reduces most human suffering to a chemical imbalance, at the expense of the body, mindset, and relationships he believes actually drive wellbeing.

He points to one statistic as evidence the current system isn't working: suicide rates are up 40% over the past 25 years. His own three-part model for mental health, body, mind, and what he calls the spiritual, relationships, meaning, safety, is the framework behind the clinic he and his wife built to help people taper off psychiatric medication safely, rather than being told a pill is the only path forward.

Topics covered:

• Why researchers gravitate toward pharmaceutical funding over government grants
• The historical models of mental health (Freud, Pavlov, biological psychiatry) he says all missed the mark
• His body-mind-spirit framework for mental health
• The rise in suicide rates over 25 years, and what he thinks it signals about the current system
• Why tapering off psychiatric medication safely requires more than going cold turkey