Factors Underlying Mental Disorders Depicted in Pink Floyd’s The Wall

Podcast from The Clinic & The Person

The diagnosis and clinical management of various mental disorders are aided by knowing the predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors in a given case. Both the themed album and the full-length movie of Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, depict these factors in the course of the main character’s—”Pink’s”— mental health deterioration through music and film. In this episode, we draw from selected songs on the album and from selected scenes in the movie connecting the three factors with particular behaviors Pink manifests. In the process, we show how they are used in medical education and training in real time.

Joining us is Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the campus chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is certified in internal medicine and psychosomatic medicine. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Rutgers. Dr. Tobia is the Director of Graduate and Interprofessional Education at Rutgers University Behavioral Health and has received the Outstanding Clinical Faculty Member Excellence Award in 2018 and 2019. He is an active contributor to the medical literature with publications, reviews, and abstracts. Dr. Tobia’s educational interests include the merging of popular culture and the field of behavioral medicine, which is evident from this episode and from his previous appearance on the podcast episode featuring The Who’s Tommy. Along with Dr. Tobia for this episode is Kevin Frederiks, who at the time of recording, was a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers.

Citations
For the recorded album: Pink Floyd. The Wall. Columbia Records, 1979.
For the movie: Parker, Alan, director. Pink Floyd The Wall. MGM, 1982.

Link
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Thanks to Dr. Anthony Tobia and (by now) Dr. Kevin Fredriks for their interesting and insightful contributions to this episode. 

Image Attribution
Pink Floyd The Wall Exhibit – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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