Playlist: All across the autism spectrumJune 18th is Autistic Pride Day, a day to celebrate the neurodiversity of people on the autism spectrum. Too often, autistic people are viewed as only autistic, and it’s seen strictly as a disorder. As always, the full picture isn’t drawn in black and white: it’s complex, full of grays. At TED, scores of speakers […]
The upside of stress: Kelly McGonigal at TEDGlobal 2013Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal is here to talk about stress. In particular, she’s here to make the case that stress might not, in fact, be the enemy we tend to think it is. To do this, she asks those assembled in the conference hall in Edinburgh to indicate how much stress they’ve felt in the past year. […]
Thomas Insel’s insights on mental health: a tale of two TED playlistsIn the past 30 years, major advances have been made when it comes to treating several serious diseases. Today, there are 85% fewer deaths from leukemia and 63% fewer fatalities from heart disease than there were then. Meanwhile, while AIDS was once considered a death sentence, people with the disease can now live to old […]
Living with voices in your head: Eleanor Longden at TED2013Eleanor Longden did well at school, and gleefully entered student life at university in England. By all appearances, she was a happy, typical student … but it wasn’t true. Underneath it all, Longden was “fundamentally frightened,” and while she did a good job of concealing her fear, she was about to come undone. She […]
Let’s have a conversation about mental health: How Sarah Caddick curated “Misbehaving Beautifully”On the TEDGlobal 2012 stage this summer, guest curator Sarah Caddick hosted the session “Misbehaving Beautifully,” a deep dive into a near-taboo subject: mental health and mental illness. Today, Oct. 10, happens to be World Mental Health Day, and TED.com is premiering the final talk Sarah curated for the stage, Ruby Wax’s “What’s so funny […]
Getting treatment for a mental illness when you live in the developing world is hardly as easy as making an appointment with a therapist or psychiatrist. Mental illness is often not treated with the same sense of urgency as physical illness, and resources to provide care are simply not available in many areas. In this […]
Bridging the gulf in mental health care: Vikram Patel at TEDGlobal2012A vast gulf in care Vikram Patel asks us to imagine two men who live in the same town. They have the same education, the same jobs, and everything else the same. Both present at a hospital with chest pains — but one is treated and one is not. Why? The second one has a […]
Don’t define people by their maddest edges: Jon Ronson at TED2012Photo: James Duncan Davidson Journalist and writer Jon Ronson is now on stage to share some of the insights from his recent book on, well, psychopaths. Now, here’s the thing about Ronson. On first sight, he looks something like a sleepy, shuffly mole, slightly surprised at where he seems to have woken up. Yet his tousled […]
