The Wonderful World of Beth Frates

This week Dr. Hallowell had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Beth Frates. Dr. Frates is a trained physiatrist and health and wellness coach who practices lifestyle medicine, helping individuals and groups to adopt healthy habits for a lifetime. She was recently voted the President Elect of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine which is the largest growing medical specialty society and now has over 7,000 members. Teaching is a passion for Dr. Frates, and she is an award winning teacher at both Harvard Medical School and Harvard Extension school where she teaches lifestyle medicine courses. Writing is another focus of Dr. Frates’s work and she has co-authored three books, Life After Stroke: The Guide to Recovering Your Health and Preventing a Second Stroke, The Lifestyle Medicine Handbook: An Introduction to the Power of Healthy Habits and most recently PAVING the Path to Wellness: A Guide to Thriving with a Healthy Body, Peaceful Mind, and Joyful Heart. She and Dr. Hallowell engage in a lively conversation that includes discussions about her background in lifestyle medicine/wellness, her writing, and how she uses her difference to not only help herself, but help others as well.

Om Podcasten

I am excited to announce my new podcast, Dr. Hallowell’s Wonderful World of Different. I will be talking with people who live to the beat of a different drum, exploring the many invisible differences so often called mental illnesses. I prefer to call them differences, both positives and negatives. I see them through the lens of neurodiversity and present them in a true and balanced view, free of the stigma and shame that so often distort and misrepresent these many and common differences. Dr. Hallowell’s Wonderful World of Different celebrates life and the tremendous variety of ways people find to live it. I celebrate the courage and creativity it takes to take a road less travelled, to live outside the lines, and to stand proud and tall being who you are, even while others misunderstand and even ridicule you. My podcast creates a celebratory, triumphant tone for the many varieties of people and minds. So-called mental illnesses are categorized by their pathology, while completely ignoring the strengths they also always embody. I intend to show how wrong—inaccurate, shaming, and condemning—such emphasis on pathology truly is. I want to turn the diagnostic manual upside down and show the myriad strengths represented in all variations of human nature, even those often called illnesses I’ve been a psychiatrist for over 40 years, and I’ve met people from all walks of life and with all sorts of differences. My show reverberates with hope, excitement, and positivity, all based on personal experience and stories. I hope you’ll join me.