Why Mental Illness Is a Metabolic Problem—and What That Means for Your Health | Dr. Chris Palmer

In any given year, approximately 1 billion people are diagnosed with a mental illness. That represents about 13% of the world's population. In Western countries, the rates are higher. One in two people will meet criteria for a mental illness at some point during their life. Mental disorders are one of the leading causes of disease, burden, and disability worldwide.

At the same time that the rates of obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing, chronic diseases are skyrocketing. The rates of mental disorders are also skyrocketing. I point that out as it should not be considered a coincidence and yet most people in our field don't think about it that way. I think that at the same time that people's physical health is getting worse, their brains are impacted too.

Dr. Christopher Palmer is a Harvard psychiatrist and a researcher working at the interface of metabolism and mental health. He's the founder and director of the Metabolic and Mental Health Program and Klein Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The reason this is so important is because if you make the assumption that these disorders are genetic and permanent and fixed, it immediately instills hopelessness.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (60 minutes, 9,817 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.