{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The Empire of Madness: Why Psychiatry Must Rethink Human Suffering - An Interview with Khameer Kidia","description":"Khameer Kidia is a physician and an anthropologist, works at Harvard Medical School and the University of Zimbabwe, and spends his life between Washington DC and Harare. Kidia has many accolades to his name \u2013 he is a Rhodes scholar and a 2023 New America Fellow. His papers have appeared in elite medical journals and his stories in the New York Times. His recent book, which we will discuss, was covered by The Washington Post. His experience navigating two cultures and his expertise across disciplines is what allows him to see that psychiatry, as it currently stands, needs to end. In this interview, we discuss how the tentacles of an exploitative global order reach into people to wreak havoc with their lives and in their minds. Disclosing his own difficult history with stimulant medications, he exposes how current psychiatric practices superficially anesthetize pain in order to return us back on the hamster wheel of productivity. Sharing his mother\u2019s struggles with \u2018nervous breakdowns\u2019, Kidia shows us the importance of patient autonomy and liberty, and the grace in letting go when people choose a path that doesn\u2019t align with our priorities. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https:\/\/www.madinamerica.com\/donate\/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https:\/\/pod.link\/1212789850 \u00a9 Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https:\/\/www.jmaudio.org ","author_name":"Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health","author_url":"https:\/\/www.madinamerica.com\/miaradio\/","html":"