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ABOUT DAVID COHEN…
David Cohen is a professor of social welfare at UCLA. His research looks at psychoactive drugs (prescribed, licit, and illicit) and their desirable and undesirable effects as socio-cultural phenomena “constructed” through language, policy, attitudes, and social interactions. He has conducted research on the side effects of psychiatric medications and on withdrawal.
He also documents treatment-induced harms, and pursues international comparative research on mental health trends, especially involving alternatives to coercion. Public and private institutions in the U.S., Canada, and France have funded him to conduct clinical-neuropsychological studies, qualitative investigations, and epidemiological surveys of patients, professionals, and the general population.
In his clinical work for over two decades, Cohen has developed person-centered methods to withdraw from psychiatric drugs and given workshops on this topic around the world. He designed and launched the CriticalThinkRx web-based Critical Curriculum on Psychotropic Medication for child welfare professionals in 2009 since taken by thousands of practitioners and updated in 2018.
Tested in a 16-month longitudinal controlled study, CriticalThinkRx was shown to reduce psychiatric prescribing to children in foster care.
He has authored or co-authored over 120 articles and book chapters.
TODAY WE CHAT ABOUT…
- What piqued David's interest in mental health
- Where he thinks the mental health model is going wrong
- What makes someone psychotic as opposed to not psychotic
- How drugs fail to stabilize people
- David’s thoughts on the chemical imbalance theory
- When you’re most at risk to commit suicide
- What the mental health system aims for
- The two different pathways to involuntary commitment
- The dark heart of involuntary commitment
- David's thoughts on medicating and diagnosing children
- Why psychiatric medication is not like insulin
CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
Email: cohen@luskin.ucla.edu
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