Cohen Miles-Rath (on psychosis and recovery)
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What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by a crying Lily Patman.
No, there's like dust on my face.
You're having an allergic reaction right now?
Well, we didn't finish something we started and that's upsetting for me.
Are there high winds in here that I don't know about?
Maybe.
Okay.
This is one of the most interesting episodes we've ever had. Yes. Our guest today, Cohen Miles-Rath, is a mental health advocate and speaker, and he has a memoir out now called Mending Reality, An Advocate's Existential Journey with Mental Health. This is a firsthand account of someone who had a psychotic break, a schizophrenic episode that resulted in them trying to kill their father.
Yes.
And the amount of bravery and honesty that Cohen brings to this is incredible.
It really is.
It is very helpful to hear the firsthand account as opposed to the outsider's view of it. It is very powerful.
I agree.
Please enjoy Cohen, Miles, Wrath.
He's an armchair expert.
Jax, nice to meet you.
Hi, Monica. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Where do you live currently? Saugerties, New York. So about a couple hours north of the city.
Saugerties. Good name.
What the fuck's up with all, like, Schenectady? Oh, yeah. What happened up there with the naming? I think it's a lot of Native Americans. Yeah. Is it Native American? Yeah. I guess we have some silly stuff up in Michigan. Mackinac Island.
Yeah, that one's wild.
Sounds like, almost like a saltwater taffy flavor. Detroit. Mackinac. Detroit's okay. What do you think about Detroit, Cohen? That's fine. I've never been to Detroit. You haven't. Never been to LA either. It's my first time. Oh, welcome. I would have said you're not missing much, but I will say the city has really rebounded. Detroit? Rebounded. Detroit, yeah. You remember my review from January. I can't believe how nice it's gotten.
Yeah.
And you're up there with wife and baby? We're not married. Partners for life. And new baby in December, December 27th. She's adorable, sweet little girl. So just months old? Yeah, four months last week.
Oh, I love it. Over the course of the last eight years, we've got to interview a lot of folks I didn't think I would ever get to talk to. And in particular, kind of a new wave of people being honest about some of these conditions that you only could learn about in an abnormal psych class like I did in college, right? And we'll get to what my current understanding of schizophrenia is based on 28-year-old class I took. But increasingly, people with these conditions are coming out and talking about the experience. And I have to say it has an incredibly powerful effect in that Take sociopathy, you're like, oh, sociopaths, write them off, stay away. And then we interview someone who's clinically diagnosed as sociopathic and you're like, oh yeah, you're just born that way and you're different from your peers and that's a rough situation.
And then we have someone with borderline personality and it's like, oh, stay away from those people. And you're like, no, those people too just got dealt a hand. And so you will be the first person I think we've talked to who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Yeah.
Yeah, schizoaffective. Yeah, tell me all the differences. Yeah, so the difference is schizoaffective can have symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations, but also bipolar or like mood type disorder diagnoses. Depression or highs and lows, right? So it's kind of a combination. But I will say that how I like to frame it is I have a mild form. A mild severity, because there is a spectrum to it. And obviously in my story, there's a lot of other factors involved, such as substance misuse and other things. So my particular incident is a unique and rare one, but it's one of the more difficult situations to talk about. But that's why I share my story.
For sure. Now, what I learned, again... 20-plus years ago now, 28 years ago, in an abnormal psych class, was schizophrenia has a genetic component. It can be seen in the genome.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is discussed at the start of this section?
0:00–13:56
2
What childhood experiences shaped Cohen's mental health journey?
13:56–33:02
3
How did running influence Cohen's identity and self-perception?
33:02–1:11:47
4
How has public perception of mental health changed over time?
1:11:47–1:12:05
5
What role does love play in recovery from mental health issues?
1:12:05–1:12:41
6
How can relationships be affected by mental health challenges?
1:12:41–1:13:05
7
What insights does Cohen share about the experience of psychosis?
1:13:05–2:07:08