Basket Case

Where do you go when your own thoughts are unsafe? Basket Case, a series hosted by Nicole Kelly (NK), decodes the kaleidoscope of mental health and uncovers how our brain contorts our reality through original reporting, tender conversations, and deeply personal explorations.

  1. 03/11/2025

    For me, this is medicine

    Western science gives us names for the things that we know – the things that we can see and feel and touch. But it’s always been skeptical of the things we can’t measure. This skepticism dates back to Europeans’ first contact with indigenous cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and the unfamiliar medicine that they found there. Today in the west, those healing modalities are often still characterized as “alternative.”  Mexico City-based integrative psychiatrist Dr. Carmen Amezcua is passionate about psychedelic plant medicine – treatments that are still stigmatized and misunderstood, even though they’ve been shown to be effective at treating depression, anxiety, and PTSD. But she prefers to describe her treatments as complementary, not “alternative.”  In this episode, somatics coach Holiday Simmons says somatics can help us reconnect to our intuition – the knowledge of our ancestors. Dr. Carmen Amezcua says western psychiatry doesn’t get to the root of our issues. And both say that ceremony is how we connect with ourselves, with nature, with our pasts, and with each other.  Transcript LINKS Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer Southern Soul Wellness: https://southernsoulwellness.com/  Dr. Carmen Amezcua: https://carmenamezcua.com/ This Is What Ayahuasca Does To Your Brain  Psychedelics, the Law and Politics - UC Berkeley BCSP  Psychedelics and Neural Plasticity: Therapeutic Implications - PMC)  ‘Authentic’ ayahuasca rituals sought by tourists often ignore Indigenous practices and spiritual grounding  Magic Mushrooms Are Most-Used Psychedelic Drug; As States Change Laws, Federal Policymakers Face Urgent Questions | RAND See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    46 min
  2. 12/17/2024

    Not the person anyone wants to be

    In the stories about Borderline Personality Disorder that Mala was familiar with, a borderline woman was always toxic – intense, erratic, angry, manipulative. And she was almost always the villain in someone else’s story. But no one ever talked about the *source* of the intense emotion – what was at the heart of it. Transcript More to read about borderline: I'm A Black Woman with Borderline Personality Disorder | Business Insider  Why I'm Distancing Myself From My Borderline Personality Disorder Diagnosis  Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Is Often Flawed | Scientific American  (Re)Valuing Borderline Personality Disorder as (Counter) Knowledge | Word & Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics  Transcendent Luminescence, Ravaging Flames: On Alexander Kriss’s “Borderline” | Los Angeles Review of Books  How Infinite Jest tethered me to life when I almost let it go | Aeon Essays   Borderline Personality and Self-Understanding of Psychopathology | Psychiatry At the Margins  Either all psychopathology is personality psychopathology or there is no such thing | Psychiatry at the Margins  Transgender and Gender Diverse Patients Are Diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder More Frequently Than Cisgender Patients Regardless of Personality Pathology | Transgender Health  I Have Forgiven Myself for My Pre-Diagnosis Recklessness | by Zuva Seven | An Injustice!  Skill Issues​ | Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Its Discontents  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    39 min

Ratings & Reviews

4.7
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

Where do you go when your own thoughts are unsafe? Basket Case, a series hosted by Nicole Kelly (NK), decodes the kaleidoscope of mental health and uncovers how our brain contorts our reality through original reporting, tender conversations, and deeply personal explorations.

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