Has Medicine Lost Its Mind? With Robert C. Smith

Has medicine lost its mind? Join MSU professor Dr. Robert Smith in our Okemos event studio to discuss how the U.S. medical system impacts our national mental health crisis, and what the public can do about it.

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About the Book:

Medicine ignores the mental health and other psychological and social needs of its patients, even though such problems are the most common its practitioners encounter. The present meager efforts to improve mental health care have been ineffective because they do not address the basic cause: medicine fails to train the primary care and other medical physicians who provide 75% of all mental health care.

HAS MEDICINE LOST ITS MIND? addresses, for the first time, the underlying cause of medicine's shortcomings: it is guided by a 16th century theory called the mind-body split that dictates an isolated focus on the physical aspects of its patients while ignoring their psychological, social, and mental health features. The book emphasizes that the public must become enraged at medicine's dereliction and require their politicians to make a change. It then describes exactly what politicians should do to correct the mental health crisis.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9781493087655

About the Author:

Robert C. Smith, MD, MACP is a University Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry Emeritus at Michigan State University. With many publications, awards, and strong grant support, he has been involved in teaching and research in patient-centered communication and primary care mental health since 1985.

He and his colleagues defined the first evidence-based patient-centered interview, now published in a popular interviewing textbook, Smith’s Patient-Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method (4th edition, McGraw Hill, 2018). Dr. Smith’s group also identified the first evidence-based method to teach primary care clinicians to diagnose and treat mental health and substance use problems. Essentials of Psychiatry in Primary Care: Behavioral Health in the Medical Setting (McGraw Hill 2019) resulted. Educators use both books to teach medical, nursing, and other health care students in the USA and abroad.

Dr. Smith’s new trade book—Has Medicine Lost Its Mind?—was published by Prometheus Books on March 4, 2025. Fed up with medicine’s resistance to improving training in mental health care, Dr. Smith decided to take the problem to the public. The book addresses the poor state of mental health care in the US, why medicine ignores it, what needs to be done, and how to accomplish this politically. Details are available on his website: https://www.robertcsmithmd.com/.