Jon Jureidini – Evidence-Based Medicine in a Post-Truth World

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

This week on the Mad in America podcast, we are joined by Dr. Jon Jureidini.

Jon is a child psychiatrist who also trained in philosophy, critical appraisal and psychotherapy. He has a continuing appointment as a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide. He heads Adelaide University’s Critical and Ethical Mental Health research group, which conducts research, teaching and advocacy to promote safer, more effective and more ethical research and practice in mental health; and the Paediatric Mental Health Training Unit, providing training and support to medical students, GPs, allied health professionals, teachers and counsellors in non-pathologising approaches to primary care mental health.

He has an international reputation for his work on the evidence base for psychiatry and is a strong advocate for addressing the social determinants of mental health.

Jon, together with co-author Leemon B. McHenry, wrote the book The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine published in 2020. The book was followed by an opinion piece which appeared in the British Medical Journal in March 2022.

In this interview, we discuss the issues with evidence-based medicine and what led to the debasement of a system originally conceived to challenge extravagant claims and poor science.