Connecting to Madness | Jim van Os | TEDxMaastricht

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Jim van Os explains that madness has been misrepresented as a 'devastating genetic brain disease', referred to as 'schizophrenia', that is said to leave the person 'completely disabled'. In fact, modern science has discovered that subtle states of madness - psychosis - are quite common in the general population, and linked to social and emotional factors. Madness, therefore, is about human variation. We can all connect to it, using novel mobile apps that track thoughts and experience in daily life.

Jim van Os is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands, and Visiting Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. 

He trained in Psychiatry in Casablanca (Morocco), Bordeaux (France) and finally at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley/Bethlem Royal Hospital in London (UK) and after his clinical training was awarded a three-year UK Medical Research Council Training Fellowship in Clinical Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1995, he moved to Maastricht University Medical Centre. He is on the editorial board of several European and US psychiatric journals such as Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, European Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Early Intervention in Psychiatry, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, Psychosis Journal, The Journal of Mental Health and the Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences. He is also an Academic Editor at PLoS ONE.