Episode 2026: Dr Damon Tweedy on today's struggle to center psychiatry and mental healthcare into the mainstream of the medical community

Connecting the civil rights struggle with the struggle to put mental health into the medical mainstream

According to Dr Damon Tweedy there a connection between the historic struggle for civil rights and today’s struggle for more mainstream mental healthcare. In 2016, Tweedy wrote Black Man in a White Coat, his bestselling reflections on race and medicine. And now the Duke University based doctor is back with Facing the Unseen, a book making the case for what he calls “centering” mental health in medicine. In both his new book and this conversation, Dr Tweedy argues for a more comprehensive and integrated approach in which people afflicted with mental illness have a healthcare system that prioritizes their full well-being.


DAMON TWEEDY is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and staff physician at the Durham Veteran Affairs Health System. He has published articles about race and medicine in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). His columns and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and various other print publications. He lives outside Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with his family.


Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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Keen On
Keen On
Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR.
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