anti-depress sants. and you get treated correctly. i want to mention lithium has been proven to prevent suicide and reduce 90% and at low doses you find in the drinking water where suicide rates are lower in the populations in those areas. we have that treatment. we can prevent it. i was just going to say i think that a step in the right direction is reduction of the stigma which your book a first rate madness in pointing out how many effective world leaders have suffered from mental health mallties and nevertheless were very effective at what they did, went a large way in that direction. dr. ghaemi, thank you for coming back. thank you. thanks for having me. that s nassir ghaemi. has suicide touched your family or anyone in your friend s circle? we ll have results at the end of the hour. tweet me
think that there s this peak of suicides in the springtime as we re seeing now and hearing about. dr. ghaemi, people do recover from depression. this is the most important point that you can underscore with your credentials. definitely. let me just say, suicide is an end point state. it s very complicated at the end, but the necessary internal kind of center of it is the depressions. it s almost always there. 90% of people who have depression don t commit suicide, but 5 to 10% do which is much, much higher than the general population. so, the key is to try to get at that disease of depression. there s the old saying if you have a what to live for, you can tolerate almost anyhow. and they lose that sense of meaning, the disease takes that from you at the end. that s treatable if you get diagnosed correctly and sometimes people get
sanity can steer us astray, while some insanity brings us to port. the book is a first rate madness: uncovering the links between leadership and mental illness. joining me is its author dr. nassir ghaemi, professor at tufts university and harvard medical school and research ear the novartis institutes. would you like to first react to anything you just heard me say? hello, michael. first, thank you for having me and let me just say my opinions are just my own, not those of any of my employers. i partially agree with what you said. we actually, i organized a meeting at the american psychiatric association annual conference last year on the goldwater rule, in which i argued against it, and i think the problem with the rule it s too absolute. not that it s completely wrong but it goes too far. the problem with goldwater you well described and i think currently with president trump,
some ways. but keep in mind, in times of crisis, these benefits occur when things are fine and there s peace and prosperity, mental health is fine. you don t need to be realistic and creative and empathic. you need to make the trains run on time. if you re too creative you may make too many changes when you don t need to. one of my concerns about current politics is that we are not in the time of crisis. our economy is prosperous. we don t have a major war. if you have a leader with some manic symptoms, for instance, that could lead actually to impulsive behavior that could create crises that need not occur. dr. ghaemi, the book is titled a first rate madness. we re not here to promote the book. you most recently wrote it in paperback form two or three years ago, but i think it s terrific. thank you. thank you, michael. nice to talk to you. what are your thoughts? tweet me @smerconish, go to my facebook page. i will read some responses throughout the course of the program. what
two from facebook. maybe a mentally ill leader creates the crises in the first place. stuart, that s not a subject dealt with by dr. ghaemi in his book, but i get what you re going with that. next facebook comment. personality types are not mental illness. helena, nobody here is trying to break it all down and say that s what we re dealing with in the current situation. look, i thought immediately as this debate was ensuing in the last couple of days of this book i read a couple years ago, and i think the doctor explained it quite well. i m personally unsettled with the conversation that s been taking place publicly in the last couple of days. i m having it in an historical context about some of those who served us like lincoln and roosevelt and churchill and kennedy. one more, i think it s a twitter comment. i prefer my leaders to be relatively free of mental illness.