Emotional CPR

Emotional CPR

This episode sheds light on the personal battles against addiction and severe mental distress through the lens of emotional CPR. You’ll hear how US psychiatrist Daniel Fisher moved from lab-based biochemistry to a human-centred view of mental health after going through psychosis, catatonia and multiple involuntary hospitalisations himself. He explains how seeing everything as chemistry "destroyed my marriage" and left him "without love and work"—those two pillars he believes are crucial for wellbeing.

Fisher shares a striking dream that helped him realise his brain wasn’t permanently "defective", linking his later psychosis to childhood sexual abuse and wider trauma. He argues that psychosis can sometimes be "a type of opportunity for healing"—but only when people are accepted and supported, rather than reduced to a diagnosis. Central to the episode is emotional CPR (eCPR), Fisher’s approach for ordinary people and mental health workers to "restart someone's emotional heart".

Using his experience with a young navy corpsman who simply looked into his eyes and said, "Hi, my name’s Rick", he breaks eCPR into three steps: Connecting through presence and genuine care; supporting the person to reclaim their own power and voice; and feeling life and energy return.

Fisher outlines six practical principles: being fully present, responding emotionally (including letting a tear show), resisting the urge to "fix" someone, dropping the expert stance, recognising that "the healer is within", and creating "new life" together in each encounter. Australian mental health worker Jenny Speed brings these ideas into local practice, showing how eCPR and peer support helped her own recovery and now assist women facing complex trauma, child protection issues and criminal justice involvement.

She stresses that "the resolution for the distress is not going to lie within you" as a helper, but within the person themselves. The episode closes with Fisher’s focus on hope, peer-led recovery, and addressing trauma and social inequality as key ingredients for genuine change in mental health care. Could emotional CPR be a skill you’d like to carry into your own relationships with people in distress?