Understanding Mental Health: conditions, caring, and contexts - Dr Calum Munro
Eating Disorders are understandable as a way of coping with uncomfortable feelings. A temporary sense of reward or emotional detachment can occur due to maladaptive eating. The disorders are driven by fears about being unacceptable. Beliefs about people with eating disorders being selfish or overly concerned about beauty, still seem to arise. In reality they tend to have an excessively low opinion of their appearance and are usually kind and generous to a fault. The belief that what is required to cure an eating disorder is to ‘just eat normally’, is still frequently expressed to people with these complex psychological disorders. I also believe the risk of premature death from an eating disorder is commonly exaggerated in public and professional discourse, with potentially unhelpful consequences for treatment. My hope for the future is that overly simplistic theories about and treatment of eating disorders will give way to more complex, integrated, holistic approaches to care.
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series
Rab Houston was born in Hamilton, Scotland, lived in India and Ghana and was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and St Andrews University before spending six years at Cambridge University as a research student (Peterhouse) and research fellow (Clare College). He has worked at the University of St Andrews since 1983 and is Professor of Modern History, specialising in British social history. He is a fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland’s national academy), and a member of the Academia Europaea. He is married to a senior university manager and lives in Edinburgh. In his spare time he likes any form of active meditation.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/staff/rabhouston.html
https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/psychhist/
- No. of episodes: 121
- Latest episode: 2021-12-06
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