Dr. Rachel Wurzman on the Neuroscience of Social Health - Zarrow Mental Health Symposium Session

Mental Health Download: Exploring Mental Illness, Suicide, Homelessness and Incarceration

"What we have, because brains wire in response to what happens between us - between me and another person, between me and my community, between me and my place of work - the locus of the dysfunction is not necessarily only in our brain. It may not even be mainly in our brain it's between us. And when we can heal what's sick between us, then the brain actually has a chance to use the biological things we're giving it. And the psychological tools that we're giving it to actually change. The implications of a bio-psycho-social disease is, if you are only treating the biological and psychological, then the unmet social, relational needs are like a weight or like an anchor and the boat can't move. We can't move to better waters because we're being weighed down. The system is constantly encountering more and more challenges to it."

On today’s episode, we interview Dr. Rachel Wurzman. Dr. Wurzman will be a keynote at this year’s virtual Zarrow Mental Health Symposium. She is the Director of Science for SeekHealing, a non-profit that is providing social connection-based interventions to make individuals and communities more resilient to opioid addiction and overdoses. Her ongoing research addresses the neuroscience of social health and how the biopsychosocial spectrum has for addiction treatment and policy.

The theme for this year’s Symposium is Cultivating Community Connections and is coming up September 29 - October 1. You can register to attend the event at www.zarrowsymposium.org

We’d like to thank two of our Sponsors - the Maxine and Jack Zarrow Foundation and the George Kaiser Family Foundation - for their ongoing support of the Zarrow Mental Health Symposium.