On today’s show we talk about a subject that’s carried a lot of stigma over the years: mental illness. But more recently, there seems to be a growing awareness and willingness to talk about mental health issues among both younger and older people, in part, spurred by the experiences of isolation, loneliness and disruption brought about by the COVID pandemic. We know, in fact, that one in five adults today experience a mental illness and one in 20 adults experience serious mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Certainly, we’re more open about it, but it’s still a difficult conversation. In today’s episode, Dr. Steven Lesk, a practicing psychiatrist for some four decades, discusses his new book, Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness. It’s a fascinating book that offers a perspective you probably wouldn’t expect. Dr. Lesk spent his medical career dedicated to those affected by schizophrenia and, in his determination to find the answer to its origins, he integrates insights from psychiatry, neuroscience, anthropology, and perhaps surprisingly, evolutionary biology. He’s not only a psychiatrist, but a groundbreaking theorist.

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