Episode 42: Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness with Nassir Ghaemi

Summary: <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It takes a special person to be a leader. One thing historians have questioned for years, is the apparent mental instability of both great and terrible leaders alike.</span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Do the qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for a strong leader? What traits are common among them? </span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Nassir Ghaemi looks at this very topic in his book, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.</span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ghaemi is an academic psychiatrist, author, and Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He’s written a number of books on mental illness and mood disorders, and has contributed to many other published works.</span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> <br><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Host Karla Stephens-Tolstoy talks with Nassir today, and we’ll hear specifically about 3 leaders and their struggles with mental health: Dr. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and John F Kennedy. Not only are the stories interesting, but also inspiring, and serve as a reminder to those suffering from mental illness that there’s no limit to what they can achieve in life. </span> </div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><br> <div style="color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style=""></span></div>