Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Antidepressants Are Placebos & ADHD Is A Sham.” - With Dr. Roger McFillin, PsyD

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

As prescriptions for antidepressant drugs increase, so do diagnoses for mental illness and Dr. Roger McFillin is stepping out to call attention to this disturbing pattern. Americans are more mentally ill now than ever, suffering severe side effects like permanent emotional numbness, infertility, and suicidal ideations. Dr. Roger McFillin questions the trustworthiness of the pharmaceutical industry and asks those who listen to do the same.Subscribe to @RadicallyGenuine on YouTube. Follow...

Today's guest believes that medical freedom is one of the defining issues of our time. He has said that the Western world has created an illusion of evidence-based mental health care. But if you follow the science, he is confident you'll find corruption at every level. My friend Ali Stuckey interviewed him this summer and before it came out, she told me, Alex, this is a guest that you've also got to have on. He is right up your alley. Her interview with him was phenomenal and you should listen to that one after this when you're inevitably left wanting to learn even more from this guest. Even before the pandemic,

one in eight Americans were on in SSRI or antidepressant. SSRI, by the way, is the official term, which stands for selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. More women than ever are on antidepressants. Over 20% of us, according to the CDC. So if the majority of us are taking happy pills, how are we more depressed than we've ever been? New studies that have been reported everywhere from L to the New York Times suggest an anti-psychiatry movement is exploding in the United States, led by mental health professionals who are tired of patients being lied to. They are sounding the alarms on two key things. This idea that some people have a chemical imbalance in the brain, which leads them to be clinically depressed, more and more believe this is completely made up by the

pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs with zero scientific evidence, including my guest. The second alarm they've been sounding is that patients deserve to be informed about what psychiatric medications are and what they are not. Their side effects, which can be long term, long after you stop taking them, and also the truth about how hard it can be to get off of them. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel. Please make sure you're actually subscribed to this podcast. Pause, leave a five-star review. So many if you listen, but a teeny tiny amount actually leave reviews. If you haven't left one so far this year, please do that.

Let me know what this show makes. means to you. Today's guest is a clinical psychologist and host of the radically genuine podcast. We'll be discussing depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, mental health education in schools, and more. This is the episode that I believe to change your life as we head into a new year. Please welcome Dr. Roger McPhillan on The Spillover. Once in a while, I sit down for an interview and I know that it is going to be a grenade launcher into the Matrix. I think this is going to be one of those interviews. Do you think people should be scared? Jeez, you know, I never, I never took the steps to be outspoken about this in order to

throw grenades. You know, it's really about being open and honest and people can make informed decisions about their health care. But yes, a lot of things I'm going to say today, I realize it's going to affect some people negatively. There are so many people on psychiatric drugs. I think we're looking at close to 25% of the American population is on some psychiatric drug. So I know a lot of the information that people might get today. They're going to to hear it for the first time and it's going to be concerning. And so the best thing I can do is try to be open and honest and share with people legitimate, established scientific information. I won't get into the weeds too much. But I hope people can take a look at the decisions they're making

about the way they live their life in a way that can lead them to a path of well-being and health and not get stuck in what's become a systemic problem. It's an epidemic in the United States, the mental health related problems. So we got a lot to talk about. You've been called dangerous and unethical. Why do you think that is? Well, when you speak out against the prevailing narrative,

especially the medical establishment, when that happens, you're going to be threatening to a lot of the ideas that have been kind of pushed into American culture. And so in some ways, I think it is, these are dangerous ideas to what is standard mental health care. When it's so quickly, like eight to ten minutes sessions,

people are being prescribed a mood and mind-altering substance that has consequences. And so when that happens and people are so attached to the idea that this is legitimate and there are some biological origin around your distress, whether it's your depression or anxiety, someone who's been kind of conditioned to believe that, even our medical professionals, will see me as dangerous. Ethical, I have an ethical responsibility to speak out against this, as does any professional, whether you're in the medical field or you're a psychologist, you should be aware of the scientific literature, the consequences, the benefits, the risks, and when you are kind of looking at

the data in our country right now, every available statistic is going to to demonstrate a couple things. One, our collective well-being is worsening. Tell me what other medical profession exists. When you institute the drug intervention or the medical intervention, the condition itself increases a thousandfold. You know, that's what we saw, that's what we've seen with antidepressants in the United States.

When it's, when it was brought into the general market, which was 1987 when Prozac was introduced, and it became widely available to the general population. What we see is diagnostic expansion. We see just an increase in the amount of people who have been diagnosed with depression. And when you look at the consequences, we see increased rates of psychiatric hospitalizations, suicide, violence, self-injury, and being diagnosed with a major medical condition, which you would think conditions like bipolar and major depressive disorder are, severe medical conditions, right? Something that was reserved for a very small percent of the

population. Now there's a large group of people identifying with that and it's completely changed our culture. And so I think when you are a doctor who has been brought up in this system that believes drugs are healthcare and psychiatric diagnoses are discrete, legitimate medical illnesses, when you hear it from my end, it's going to appear to be something that is threatening or even potentially unethical. But like I've always said, I've challenged to have any psychiatrist

or medical professional who disagrees with me, to have a discussion about it. And has anyone taken you up on it? One gentleman, one psychiatrist has come on to my podcast to debate me, but it didn't really turn into a debate because, you know, really he ends up agreeing with a lot of the things that I say.

Sometimes they'll say I'll overstate it, But I think I have the science on my side. I've had a number of medical professionals come on my podcast. That's part of what I'm talking about on the radically genuine podcast is I want to hear perspectives from major medical authorities in the United States about the direction of our health care and our mental health care because, you know, we're just getting sicker. And we're prescribing more and more drugs. Yeah.

So here's my question. Do our primary care doctors want us healthy or do they want us sick and? independent. So I honestly believe that most of them want to do, do the best work that they possibly can, but they're restricted by a system. You know, you repeat a lie enough times it becomes truth. And that is the story here when it comes to psychiatric drugs. Over 80% of these drugs are now prescribed in primary care settings. So pediatrics, your general practitioner. And the average amount of time when you see a GP is about eight minutes. Yeah, it's 10 minutes or less.

Yeah. And they have to write the note in that. So ultimately what happens is they're following guidelines. And those guidelines are established by the major medical organizations. Who funds the major medical organizations? As you would expect, the pharmaceutical industry, biotech, and some of the nonprofit companies that are kind of supported by the pharmaceutical industry. So you're seeing a big systemic problem where the scientific literature that they rely upon

is deeply, deeply flawed. So in the scientific literature, it's actually written by people who are working for the big pharma companies, right? Some of it? So maybe a lot of people do not know this in the United States when a drug comes to market that the pharmaceutical companies themselves are the ones who are doing the research. How is that allowed? It's a good question.

You know, let's ask our government officials, how do we allow the pharmaceutical industry who gets to profit off the drugs that they sell? How are they the ones that are conducting the research? Is that specifically only something that happens in America or all over the world? It's a good question. I'm not really sure. I can only speak to our country because that's what I'm most invested in learning. But when it comes to my field, let's use antidepressants, for example. So you are, you're looking at the drug companies who are actually doing the research themselves.

And what they do is they hire academics to ghost write the papers. So generally speaking, those who are publishing the research, writing those papers are someone that's paid for by that pharmaceutical company. Or are they have other academics who are direct employees of the pharmaceutical companies. Like the best example of this is the drug lexapro. Have you ever heard of Lexapro? I just got off of it last year. You did? I did.

And I have so much to ask you about it. Well, if you're willing to share, can I ask you some questions around it? Yeah. How did you initially get on the drug Lexapro? I was experiencing stress and anxiety at work. And I had a wellness checkup that was less than 10 minutes. And I told my doctor, I said, I'm feeling so anxious lately, but I've never been on any type of antidepressant or anxiety medication.

I'm not sure if that's right for me. And she just said, well, yeah, I mean, it's no big deal at all. We'll just put you on Lexa Pro, 10 milligrams. And it's not a big deal. If you don't like it, we can take you off. And so I started taking it for a couple years. And then last year, I weaned myself off of it. I took like a third off.

Then I went down to half. Then I was only taking a tiny bit of it. And then I was done. And did you do that on your own? Yes. So your GP has probably no expertise or balance. background in mental health or understanding what these drugs actually do. And this is what we see happen. Someone comes in and is experiencing normal stress and anxiety. It's not like you have a

stressful job or anything, right? I mean, it depends on the day, but I think probably not anywhere near other people. But the thing is, is that there was no, when I think about it, there was no conversation about what side effects could be, long-term effects could be, or exploring any other options. It was just like, oh, no big deal. We'll just get you this. And if you want to get off it, you can. So to me, it was so nonchalant the way it was prescribed that I just thought, okay, yeah, no big deal. Like, this is just going to help. And also I didn't notice any difference getting on it. I didn't notice any difference in my daily stress or levels of anxiety, by the way. I only noticed a difference whenever I would miss a couple days and I was off of it. Well, you're actually one of the

lucky ones because a lot of people have an adverse reaction to the drug. So they didn't tell you there's more than a double risk of a suicide event. If you start taking Lexapro, They didn't tell you about psychosis or mania. And if you actually do miss a dose, you can have such serious withdrawal. You might want to kill yourself. I missed two days. I remember distinctly going two days off of it because I had forgot to, you know, get a refill. And I was experiencing major suicidal thoughts.

And I knew, but I knew. And I was talking to my boyfriend at the time. And he was like, you got to get your refill. And I was like, yeah, because I knew that's what it was. Then I was like, I got to get off of this. Many people think the only hot take there is to have on toilet paper is if the role should be over or under. But actually, the hottest debate you should be having on toilet paper is if it should be in your home at all. By the way, the correct answer is over.

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area, but that person is making a killing because they are putting so many young people on the drug Lexapro. So much so that I had a teenage client who told me that her and her group of friends call themselves Lexahos. What? Lexa hose. That's how much the drug is being pushed for young people. Now, interesting research science that came out over this summer. In July, the FDA approved the drug Lexapro for kids as young as seven years old for anxiety. Now, when you read the paper and you look at the data, this is what occurred. The kids that took the drug Lexapro had a six-fold increase in becoming suicidal.

in comparison to the placebo. So that was nine and a half percent of kids. And we're talking about as young as seven who are now vulnerable to becoming suicidal from taking the drug when they weren't previously. And did you know what the authors concluded with this study? What? That Lexopro is safe and tolerable.

How is that possible? You know, there's a lot of people who aren't going to believe these things. And Alex, I didn't believe it either when I first started investigating this. I believed in our country, our regulatory system. Just trusted if the FDA was going to approve these drugs, they were safe and they were effective. I'm sure you assumed the same thing. But I was, in my clinical practice, I was rarely seeing people get better. And there was just a large percentage of people who were getting so much worse.

Here was the brainwashing. I'd have someone come into my office and I do an evaluation, maybe administer some depression measures, and they're severely depressed, right? And they might be on an antidepressant or more than one psychiatric drug for a decade or more. Now, it asked them the question, why do you continue to take this drug if you're severely depressed? And they would say, well, I was told that I would be much worse if I didn't. I said, you've been depressed for a decade. You want to die. How worse? How much worse can it get? And that's kind of the brainwashing that has gone on in American society when we're taught about the value of drugs. Do you think that the FDA approving

Lexapro for kids as young as seven is just as egregious as when they also labeled Oxycontinent as non-addictive? I put it in the same category. Yep. And that's why you see so many of these government officials or FDA officials end up having like careers with the pharmaceutical companies. I mean, that's another aspect that, you know, we should have some law, you know, that prevents that level of conflict, right? The conflict of interest that exists where, you know, if your job is in the drug regulatory process and you can somehow, benefit in the millions, right, later on in your career by leaving the FDA and working for a pharmaceutical company that should be prevented. Yeah. So has there been a concerted effort by Big Pharma

to manipulate the public into thinking that mood changes are a biological disease? Yeah, you just have to go back to the 90s. We're one of two countries that have direct to consumer advertising. So we were bombarded. Your generation in particular was just bombarding. with magazine covers, commercials like Zoloft on television. They even paid for lines in television and in movies to talk about these drugs as if there's an imbalance in the brain. So you're almost like mass conditions. You probably even heard it in school that if you have like depression or anxiety,

it's because you have a deficiency in serotonin and it's just like any other medical disease. And so you just take these drugs. It's just like insulin for diabetes. and it completely altered the way generations view their own emotional experience. You know, I'm old enough to see the transition. You know, when I was younger growing up in the 80s into the early 90s, struggling, especially during your adolescent years, was just normalized, right?

To go through rough patches and to go through difficult periods, it's just like, you know, it's just indicative. Your emotions are just indicative of the challenges that exist. Your generation had nirvana. my generation as Lexapro. It's like. Exactly. And then Kirk Cobain, you know, died by suicide. And that pushes everything too into the culture and narrative because they can use this to say, these conditions are diseases. And if they go untreated, you know, this is what you're at risk for. You're at risk for substance abuse. You're at risk for long-term depression. And there's fear

that's propagated into our culture. And so a lot of people probably still believe this. I think there was a survey that I recently read that 80% of Americans still believe that your emotional states are related to chemical imbalance in the brain. And that's what continues to drive the drugs. And you're saying that is not true? I'm not the one saying it. I'm saying that there's never been any science to support it. And there was a 2022 systematic umbrella review that was published. And this actually got some mainstream media. Usually don't see that too often with the, with drugs and anything when that comes to the pharmaceutical industry because the pharmaceutical industry

basically has bought our media. But there's a 2002 systematic review by Joanna Moncrief. She's a psychiatrist out of the UK and her colleagues. A systematic review is looking at, basically it's a meta step back, looking at all the studies

that were ever conducted on serotonin and depression. And here's, it was always just a theory. It was called the serotonin theory of depression that got, pushed as marketing propaganda, really. It's probably the most lucrative marketing campaign in the history of the world because of the billions in drug sales every year and then the effect

that it's had on culture. But basically the finding is this. You know, your depression, your mood really has nothing to do with serotonin. Doesn't some people who are severely depressed have more serotonin than the average person. There's probably a bell-shaped curve. Really, there's no relationship, right? So anyone who is taking a SSRI or SNRI, these are the classes of antidepressants, you're targeting a neurochemical in your brain, but there's nothing wrong with it. Nothing's established that there's anything wrong with it. So then what are the consequences of doing that long term? The studies are usually about eight weeks, 12 weeks, and no one's really on an antidepressant for just eight weeks or 12 weeks, they're more likely they're going to be on it for years.

So everyone is a guinea pig out there. And we don't talk enough about what are the potential short-term and long-term consequences of the drugs. Some of them are quite severe, especially like we've really kind of evolved in thinking about health in more complex ways, especially our gut, for example. And even when you talk about our neurochemicals and our brain, everything's, there's a gut-brain reaction, So I'm focused completely on gut health, working with my clients in that regard. And then you're going to pop a pharmaceutical that kills healthy gut microbiome. I mean, it's insanity and it makes no sense. I think most people who are going to take an SSRI are going to experience one or two things.

Nothing. No major effect at all. The second one is going to be like an emotional numbing effect. So if you're lucky enough not to experience the most. severe side effects that occur because likely probably has something to do with the way you metabolize drugs, which we don't test for, by the way. But most people are going to experience some form of emotional numbing, which almost leads to a disconnect or a detachment from people. I've had cases where like a husband or wife goes on an SSRI and then, you know, has an affair

for the first time and just doesn't care, walks out of his marriage, quits jobs, just because there's just an apathy or a detachment that occurs from the drug because it can induce that. It does induce an emotional numbing in a certain amount of people. What I try to communicate, especially to all my clients when we're doing informed consent, is emotional numbing is not antidepressant. Antidepressant is a marketing term. We have no drugs that are antidepressant. They're emotional numbing, for the most part, if they do anything at all.

but for others there's a side effect profile of increased stimulation. So like increased activity, acathia, homicidal thinking, suicidal thinking, increased energy. But can I just say,

just to play devil's advocate, I feel like some people listening that are going to be resistant to this, their argument would be, okay, so you're saying that it makes you numb, but wouldn't that be better than an alternative of wanting to actually kill yourself? Well, there's no evidence. Since that experiencing intense emotions is really what drives somebody to want to end their life. And that's never been my experience in a couple decades with being a clinical psychologist

and working in the field. Usually when people do want to end their life, it's, you know, they've lost any sense of like meaning or purpose to their life or they believe that they themselves are going to be a burden on those who are caring about them or loved ones. And so maybe they see themselves of having emotional pain and it's never ended. Yeah. Actually, when we talk about recovery from anyone from a major depressive disorder or someone who's really anxious, actually feeling those emotions is therapeutic.

Same thing with grief, right? You know, collectively, that's one thing we can all understand as human beings. We know what it's like to lose somebody on some level, even if it wasn't somebody who died, a breakup or the death of a pet. And how many antidepressants are prescribed because somebody walks in and says, I'm struggling because of a breakup. That's what you see in primary care settings. That's why I believe it's criminal having primary care doctors prescribing these drugs.

They have no right to be doing it. They just don't understand it. This is not a happy pill. This is not a pill that helps someone with stress or anxiety or has them overcome something. It's completely marketed in a way that's just not accurate. It doesn't work that way. And then you balance it with the risks. Things we do not talk about enough is.

the role of these drugs in suicide and homicide. Just you can go look at the regulatory warnings from international governments. They're all on these drugs, right? And that's just one drug. Whether it's something like Prozac or Lexapro, they have the warnings. They can induce homicide. They can induce aggressive, violent, and even bizarre behavior. So what do we start seeing when these drugs become more widely prescribed?

while we see school shootings, mass shootings, something that did not exist when I was in school. Has there been any evidence that school shootings, mass shootings, and antidepressants are connected? So, I mean, it's difficult for me to actually say, well, what is evidence? You start speaking out of line. And then, you know, before I know it, I have a drug company who, because I'm on a media broadcast and they want to, you know, sue me for saying something that, not accurate. Here's what I will say. Go look at how many school shooters were on at least one psychiatric drug. Where can we see what they were on? Is that in their autopsy or something? Well, if it's reported by the media, it's out there. The other thing you can do is try to do a

deep dive into some of the court hearings. The wrongful death court hearings where the discovery process begins to release some of this information, like when a pharmaceutical company has identified that there is an increase of suicide in the drug and then in their in their company emails they report we have to minimize this to the public things like that like what happened with prozac for example um so let me just i'm a logical reasonable guy let's use some deductive reasoning you have a drug that inducese psychosis bizarre behavior homicidal ideations in a percentage of the population you start increasing that drug to a large group of young developing brains in a manner that has never been introduced before in the history of all humanity and then you see an increase in violence and you see an increase in school shooting and those people who were acting out in violence were on at least one psychiatric drug

correlation doesn't equal causation, I understand, but let's ask some serious questions and why isn't our government investigating this. So what do you believe is the cause then of all of these mental health issues rising in the United States? Is it totally just social contagion or is there something else going on? Is it the food? Yeah, it's complex and I don't want to say there's one single cause, but it's all those things. So, well, one thing is we walk around with a supercomputer in our pockets, which has grabbed our attention. Oh, so EMFs, that's like a real risk you're saying? Because, you know, so many people tell me that I'm an absolute conspiratorial loon for saying that. No, I mean, I think what we're learning is a lot of people who were conspiracy theorists are often

coming off on the right side here of history. So if a lot of the things that I'm saying, if you believe their conspiracy, well, then you are just accepting blindly what you're told. But when you think about the complexity of being human, right? There's always going to be multiple factors that influence it. So not only is it the EMF, but it's your exposure to that to social media. We're living through screens. That's a problem. We see that it is really detrimental for teenagers to be engaged in a social media world for an extended period of time.

Because it gives you kind of a false idea of what it actually is to be a person, to be a human. So you have like a lot of negative self-image when you're on social media and you're looking at everyone's highlight real. You know, it kind of gives you this false idea of kind of who you are. But we live in one of the sickest nations in the world. Look at what we're eating, you know, our lifestyles. We are social creatures. We're social beings. We're supposed to be engaging and interacting with each other.

We're supposed to be moving. We're supposed to be outside, engaged under the sun, connected to nature, and eating. locally sourced, nutrient dense foods. But the life that we are actually living is nothing like that. We are more socially isolated and disconnected that at any point, I think, in history. We are getting information, which is just like poison from the media. It's always fear-based. We have kids more isolated with sleep problems because of our circadian rhythms are messed up

because we're inside all the time with like fluorescent artificial lighting. So, I mean, it's multiple problems. And then the way that it's kind of communicated to everyone is if you don't feel well, well, here you have a chemical imbalance. Why don't you take a pharmaceutical? So I think there's a lot of movements out there. We're trying to kind of restore sanity, no pun intended, and kind of swing back to kind of getting connected to things that I think are really important.

your faith, having like purpose and meaning, being connected and serving others, taking care of your health and your well-being, connected to nature, being able to just express love again. We live in such a fear-based kind of culture. So if you're going to talk about changing mental health, it's going to require, you know, a lot of shifts in the way that, you know, we're kind of raising our kids and raising our lives. First and foremost, don't give a kid a phone before the age of 12.

You have kids, right? I have three kids. So what do you do with them with phones? Well, they're older now. So my oldest is 22. I have a 19 year old and I have a 17 year old. So basically what happens is this is you want to keep that phone away from them until they're old enough to be responsible with it.

I personally, my wife and I, we just decided that we're going to have our kids as busy as possible with a lot of different things. Two of my kids were in sports. other one, you know, it was in drama and the arts and music. School was always most important. Faith, family, those type of things were really important. So it's like, where's your attention? If you're going to focus your attention on nonsense

and you're going to be stuck in a screen all the time or playing video games, you're going to end up feeling pretty bad. So were you just super transparent and open with them of like, hey, you're old enough now. I know you're going to have Instagram. I know you're going to have TikTok, but like you need to know these are the,

the negative effects of like doom scrolling and stuff or or what? You have those open conversations, but you also limit the use, right? So don't allow your kids to have their phone in their bedroom, especially at night, right? Make sure they're off that thing a couple hours before they have to go to sleep. And it's a, and it's all around responsibility too.

So if you're going to use that phone, all the other things in your life better be in order. Because if it's not, that's the first thing we're going to be yanking from you. And you have to be willing to do it. And what I'm seeing as a psychologist is, you know, parents are parenting and fear. Yeah. That the kids lead them to believe that their whole social world is around that phone.

Kids will lie about they need the phone for school. They need it for homework, all these things. Don't buy it, parents, and get in touch with that teacher. You have to be willing to take that phone away from them for extended period of time and let them earn it back for doing, you know, behaviors you want to see increase. you want to see academics increase or you want to see them make some changes, use that phone as a reward, but still limit it. Like we have good research that shows that if you're on that phone for more than two hours,

you start to have some detrimental negative effects. And, you know, that's something that shifted in my work as a psychologist. You come in to see me. One of the first things I'm going to do is say, pull out your phone. Oh, are you going to check our screen time? Check your screen time. No, I'm done screwed then. And eight, nine hours a day?

Tell me how anyone can feel good being on that phone for eight or nine hours a day. Oh, you don't for sure. The other thing is that I think is interesting is this idea, so many public schools, it's part of the curriculum to be doing mental health education with kids. Should schools be doing mental health education with children? My goodness, no. You have to keep teachers out of the social lives. of your kids and you have to be very careful and vigilant to what is happening.

But I don't understand that answer because we're in a mental health crisis, they're saying. Yeah, you're taking people who have no expertise in this area and have been indoctrinated into this viewpoint of what is mental illness. And you're going to ask them to now try to condition and speak to your kids about what mental illness is. I mean, I think I lost my mind when one of my daughters teachers said if you have anyone who has depression it's related to a chemical imbalance in your brain and they're disabled like anyone else just like if you had cancer i almost lost my mind because it makes no sense right and it robs kids of the opportunity to have some emotional literacy and understand that their emotions are actually gifts for you to be to use for your own kind of

purpose and to solve and face problems but if you have children or adults or anyone start to look inward on themselves and view their emotions as if they're dangerous or if they're a symptom of a disease. That in itself is so detrimental. Are children going through mental health education at school more likely to identify as mentally ill? Yeah, I don't know if you're, if you're on my Twitter or if you're following some of this research, they actually, this was out of Australia. They actually did. I think it was like a 12-week program. It was called Wise Mind or wise kids, wise kids. And it, listen, on the surface, it looked like it was, you know, pretty interesting, right? Just going to teach some kids some coping skills, right? Emotion regulation, distressed tolerance. It was kind of an integration between some like Eastern philosophies around mindfulness, something that you would think is rather nebulous. But what they found was that the group that actually got the mental health intervention, and we're talking about in schools. So we're not talking about a population. where kids are struggling with their mental illness or mental health and they're seeking out treatment.

We're just talking about a general population of kids that go to school. The kids that went through the program compared to the kids that didn't actually identified worsening mental health, worsening symptoms of depression, worsening symptoms of anxiety. So it was actually a detrimental program. So a lot of educators out there are going to believe that there's nothing wrong with increasing education around these type of ideas. But that's actually wrong. The more you get kids to start thinking about their own mental health, you're commanding their attention. So now their attention is not focused outward on life where it should be and being a kid. It's now focused on inward.

And how often do they use terms like depressed over sad? Yeah. I never hear the word sad anymore. it's completely gone from our culture. As a psychologist, and I'm a clinical psychologist, so I really went through school and chose this path in my life because I wanted to help people who were struggling the most. And so I'm not coming on this podcast saying that there aren't people who really require some support and assistance. I will question a manner in which it's provided.

But there are people who are really, really struggling. So if we think about something that skews outside, what is normal and typical, someone who, you know, might be extremely depressed or so overwhelmed by panic or fear they don't leave their house, those people require our help. They really do. And you're talking about drugs in that sense? No. Oh, still no. Yeah, I'm still now. So those people I want to help. But now people come into our center and I don't know what the waiting list is.

for my center, but it's quite long, and that's what we see across the United States, people will use the word depressed to say that they were sad for a couple days. So I'll start working with clients where maybe doing some active interventions. They're monitoring their mood, and they're monitoring their mood as depressed. And I was taught that depression was a real serious clinical condition that had functional impairment. Now we just have teenagers and young adults saying I was depressed because, I mean, they were lonely one night. So it was a lot. So, it's completely hijacked our culture, these words, these psychiatric labels have hijacked our culture in a way that it's just part of the normal lexicon. So people are using serious psychiatric

labels to identify their own internal experience and where your attention goes, your energy flows. So if you're going to see normal stress and anxiety, the normal struggles of living as a psychiatric illness, that reshapes the way that you view yourself. This one's for the lady, so if you're not a lady, fast forward, except for my camera crew who is sitting here that has to be subjected to this against their will. I would say I'm not the heaviest flow girl, but I'm certainly heavier. Like for day two, I usually have to wear a tampon and an overnight pad for extra protection. And it's just day two for some reason for me. Well, Garnu really has impressed me with their new 100% organic cotton pads.

I thought that I was using an overnight pad on my last day two. but it was actually a regular by accident. And miraculously, I still didn't bleed through my pants. Can I get a, oh yeah? Garnu feminine products are incredibly non-toxic and conservative-oed. No fragrance, dyes or chlorine. The tampon applicator is BPA-free. All the cotton is 100% organic, which means no glyphosate.

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and developing core standards of how to educate our kids. We have to look at how it's all integrated and how they support academics or, you know, they get academics on the payroll who develop these curriculums or these programs, under the disguise of early intervention. And it's presented as if it is scientific and it's empirical. And therefore, people who don't know any better, like academics and education training the teachers, they believe that if you can kind of communicate these things,

that we're going to intervene early. And we're going to protect people and provide them skills and mental health should be treated as any other health-related condition. The truth of the matter is it's not how it works. That's not how mental health is actually obtained. I think we obtain our mental health by things like exercise and community and connection and love-carrying family, all the things that are like really have been important since probably the beginning of time.

We're now kind of reshaping it for young people. And it's kind of a very twisted idea. How would the public school system, I guess, benefit from the, majority of students being medicated? Well, there are certain drugs that are going to subdue kids. So we know everyone probably is aware of ADHD. I'm old enough to remember ADHD to be a controversial diagnosis that was generally applied to a very small percentage of boys with behavioral problems.

It is no longer that. it is now a widely diagnosed condition that is driven from our public schools. So let's just think reasonably here. So I already mentioned before how important it is to be connected to nature and active and exposed to the sun. And obviously it's very important for kids to be interacting with other kids, unstructured play. There's so many things that we're getting away from in our culture. but if you have just like an active boy or a social girl, for example,

and then you put them in a public school environment where they're in a small classroom under artificial light, and you have a teacher who might be a bit authoritarian and rule-based, and you expect those kids to sit in a chair all day long, absorb information, mostly auditory from a teacher. and if you struggle in that and you cause any type of behavioral problems, then you're labeled, right? The public school system is really great at kind of pushing obedience, obedience to authority.

And I think that's probably, if you look back historically, the purpose of public schools was to train factory workers for the most part. And that is, I mean, well documented and we know that. That is why public schools were created. Yes. Which a lot of people don't know. A lot of people don't know. And the type of kids who really excel in a public school environment are ones who are obedient to authority.

They're wrote learners. So they're really good at memorization and they're really good at following rules. And that's where I'm afraid, you know, a lot of our medical professionals who've done really good academically, they go into the same system where they're just following rules. They're memorizing textbooks. books, you know, they're really good at organic chemistry and then following guidelines. They don't know how to give individualized care is what you're saying. I'm afraid that we've lost our ability to critically think and critically evaluate.

You know, if I was king of the world and, you know, I had anything to say about our educational system, I'd want to teach critical analysis, problem solving, interpersonal skills. You know, that's going to be what's required of generations to be able to solve the problems that exist. And I think unfortunately, which is part of a greater system that values that deference to authority and that obedience. And I just have to think that has some purpose, you know, in a culture, in a society that's capitalistic and values that, you know, whether evolving from the factory system to working in cubicles. You know, you need people who follow rules. So ADHD as a, the development of a disorder is people who kind of fell outside that spectrum of normal can get

labeled and then placed on a drug that's very well established to kind of subdue kids and make them really easier to deal with in a public school setting. And that diagnosis and those drugs are driven by teachers. And it's because they the teachers are wanting to make their job easier, are not necessarily looking at your kid and saying, oh, I think your kid, you know, could benefit from this. It's really about like, I need everybody to just sit down and be quiet so that I can get through my day and get my checklist done. Yeah, technically speaking, you're supposed to exhibit those behavioral, we'll call them symptoms in multiple contexts, right? But in reality, it doesn't work that way. I worked in the schools for, I guess it was like six or seven years while I was

getting my doctorate and doing other various work. And what I was finding was the worst teachers had the most behavioral problems and also made the most referrals for ADHD. That's exactly what I was wondering. I was wondering if anybody has thought to look into different schools, the teachers who are recommending that your kid get on Adderall or riddle in or whatever, whatever it is for ADHD. if they tend to be more like authoritarian or...

Yeah, there's a rigidity to those type of teachers. And you'll hear this like with stories from parents is, you know, their kids ADHD one year and then the next year they're not, you know, and it's just about the environment and the quality of the teacher. That's the weird. That should be the biggest glaring red flag. Hello. If your kid is like one year they are, one year they're not.

I mean, wouldn't that right there tell you that your kid truly never had that? Yeah, and this was the problem I had with teachers. I'd be in one classroom with a kid. I'd go in and do some observations. And the teachers say, hey, you need to talk to the parents about getting them an ADHD referral, go see the doctor. And I'd be in one classroom. And the kid is supposed to sit there for 40 minutes.

And if he doesn't raise his hand and he calls out, then he's kind of labeled from that teacher. And she treats that kid horribly. And then you go to another classroom and the teacher's like really active and recognizes is that the kid is social and the kid needs to move and then uses the kid or their class in an active way with group work and values socialization, values other skills. Like I imagine you're in media. I'm sure when you were growing up, you were probably really social.

You probably needed to- Constantly kicked out of class for talking. Constant. Constant. I was totally that kid had to sit in the hallway and then my friends would, you know, be walking in the class. I'm sitting outside. I'm like, yep, I've already been kicked out, you know.

And now I do this for a living. Of course. I mean, that's human diversity, right? We all have these unique, God-given abilities and skills. And I think the hard part of a teacher is that you should be able to realize who's in front of you and where are their skills and try to, you know, really support that skill development, allow them to do lots of different things. You know, classrooms should try to in some way mimic the real world, you know, the best that we can. And, you know, when education, you know, when education, is just about sitting down and not being active for such a long period of time, you're going to see a lot of kids, especially the ones now who have that supercomputer in their pocket, are playing video games and are exposed to that level of technology. It's even more difficult to expect them to sit for long periods of time and be able to sustain their attention to things that they don't find interesting.

That is not ADHD. And that's what I want to say to your entire audience is just because you're having trouble focusing on something, that doesn't mean it's my ADHD. There is no such thing as ADHD. ADHD is not something somebody has. Not adults or children? Not adults or children. How can nobody have it? I don't understand.

There are people that say, well, I have trouble focusing. Because it's not something somebody has. Like you don't go to the grocery store, not wear a mask and catch ADHD at the grocery store. You don't go to your doctors and get a blood test. say we've detected ADHD in your blood. These are social labels. They're constructions that we've identified. They have no explanatory value. But how do you explain then somebody who has trouble focusing, getting assignments done, getting work done? They start taking Adderall and then they're finally able to focus. Because Adderall is a stimulant, at least in the short term for a lot of people.

It's a performing enhancing drug. Is it legal meth? It is legal meth. I mean, it's not methamphetamines, but it is a chemical derivative of it. And it's speed, right? So it is a Schedule 2 narcotic. Schedule 2 means it's high likelihood for dependence. The thing that I've always found interesting is this, the American Academy of Pediatrics. They will dissuade anyone from giving caffeine to a kid, right?

Don't give kids caffeine. But they'll prescribe riddalin and adderol to any kid who meets some criteria on it. on a checklist. Like, it's crazy, right? So anyone who takes Adderall, for the most part, it's going to enhance your cognitive focus. You'll probably be subdued. When I have my coffee in my morning, another stimulant, I'm able to get a lot of work done. You know, it actually even calms me down and focuses me. That doesn't mean that if you take an Adderall and you experience that positive effect, it means you have this underlying brain condition that no one can test for. it just means that you're normal.

And there's a diversity of normal. Okay. So this is really rocking my world. If you're saying that it's an absolute scam for adults to have ADHD, then what does it mean when we are giving kids these ADHD drugs? Well, it means there's consequences. So these are synthetic chemical compounds that are made in a factory, their mind altering and their mood altering.

your child is in stages of development. So they're going to be going through rapid periods of growth, the brain being an important part of that. And what we actually know about the long-term use of these drugs is not evaluated by science. You're not going to be able to find any long-term studies on the negative effects on kids on stimulant drugs. What are you seeing in teenage clients who,

were put on ADHD meds very, very young, elementary school. Well, I've been doing this so long. I can talk to the 30-year-old, the 35-year-old, the 40-year-old. Okay, tell me. What happens to them? So, you know, a lot of them will sit in front of me and say how they became like a shell of themselves. It could affect their appetite, their energy levels.

Some get tired. They feel disconnected, you know, just similar to a lot of other drugs. you'll see this too with the regulatory warnings. And if you go to the drugless websites and you see all the potential side effects, they're not that different from other psychiatric drugs. Because they're all doing something similar. They are, they're targeting specific brain chemicals, and they're increasing their availability in the nerve cell.

And there's no identified problem with that, right? So again, goes back to what we're talking about with the serotonin hypothesis. there's no real identifiable scientifically determined concern with grain chemicals. So what happens when you start raising the availability of noraphenephyrant, for example, which is like a stress hormone?

Well, in the short term, you're going to kind of get focused. If I was a professional athlete, like a baseball player, for example, you know, there's been problems with Adderall. It's a banned substance, but it was it enhances cognitive focus. But like anything, the brain seeks out homeostasis

and you'll need more and more of the substance to get the same result. So what happens is people got dependent on it. And how many milligrams are they taking at like the top? Not certain. But this is the one thing that you'll know. It's a complete experiment. So nobody knows.

It's trial and error. So you can give somebody the lowest dose and it can have a negative effect on them. And you can give the lowest dose for someone else and can have no effect. So doctors are constantly playing with the dosages. So the range of effects can be quite varied for people. Some people can get sick on it.

Some people can feel good, even feel high on it. Some people can feel calm on it. Other people can feel agitated. But again, we're giving it to young kids, right? And it does have a powerful, sedative focus kind of effect for a large percentage of kids for a period of time. But again, with consequences, the longer you're on it, then the more it's not going to probably have its effect. And then what do you do?

Yeah. You have to add the new drug. And that's why I say it's a gateway drug into the mental health system. You first identify someone as ADHD, which anyone can get an ADHD diagnosis. Anyone. I mean, they are giving it to anyone on TikTok. Every time I scroll on there, there's someone telling me you might have ADHD. I'm like, where is this?

But it seems like it's exploded in the last six months even on there. Yeah. This is the power of pharmaceutical marketing. And, you know, what is their role? What is their job? They are beholden to their shareholders, not to our health well-being. So they learned a long time ago that if you only give psychiatric drugs to the very small percentage of people who meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis, it's not very lucrative. But when you can expand the amount of people who identify.

as mentally ill. Well, now you can increase the sale of your drugs significantly. And they have. ADHD is something that is nebulous enough that anyone can identify with it. You don't know if you have ADHD because you don't know what the next person feels. So you can be sitting at home and maybe you're, you know, you love music or you're an artist and you're studying math and science and you're like, this is boring, I can't focus on this. Maybe there's something wrong with me. So it's distorted the idea of what is normal, right? The truth of the matter is, is our brain is designed to be able to attend to the most novel and relevant stimuli. Right. So for me, when I read things that are of interest to me, I remember them. And I can

focus on them for extended period of time. But if you have me sit down in a math class, for example, and have me remember a lot of numbers and statistics. My mind doesn't work that way. But I can remember something like a client told me 10 years later. You know, I can be walking down the street and there's an old client. I'll remember their entire life story. So that's like how my brain works. But, you know, I think I failed ninth grade algebra.

Right? Everyone's different. But if you get to identify yourself as mentally ill, well, then you're going to seek out their intervention. you're going to seek out their product. And they're constantly kind of pushing this vulnerability on American society. You know, all the messages about how vulnerable you are and how sick you are. And if you can just rely on our product, we'll certainly get you back to health.

And we don't want to stigmatize that, right? Because if we stigmatize it, then we decrease customers. So we have to have these defeat stigma campaigns. And I'm going to tell you right now, Now, the last thing that exists in American society is stigma around mental health. There probably should be a little bit more because everyone is seeking out a therapist. Everyone is seeking out the right drug. And that's what I don't understand.

How are we all medicated and everybody has a therapist? Every one of my friends has a regular therapist. And yet everybody is more sick and miserable than we've ever been. Something is disconnected here. Yeah. It's an industry. And we've been sold. we've been sold a bill of goods, we've been sold, we've been sold lies. I mean, I'm a therapist

and I'll be the first to tell you that most people should not be in therapy. And other therapists out there, this is where people say I'm dangerous because I'm, you know, threatening your livelihood. I love dangerous people. I know, so this is what I put this out on Twitter not too long ago. I said, so what happens when somebody spends too much time in their head and is always self-critical and negatively evaluating themselves and they're judgmental and they're overthinking. And then you send them to a therapist where they spend more time evaluating themselves and overthinking. Are you going to tell me that that's something that's helpful? You know, we've got people who are in therapy

for years believing that they have to share every detail of their lives with a therapist before they can make a decision. What I'm trying to figure out is if therapy, number one, how do you know if therapy is right for you? And two, after you've been going, how do you even know if it's been working? Like, is there a timeline like, hey, if you are not feeling better in six months to a year, you need a new therapist or you need to quit or like, what is your advice on that? Yeah. So the way, the work that I do is not typical to what is most therapy. So I do really identify as a clinical psychologist. So my clients are generally suffering from, a identifiable clinical condition.

Like what? When I say, bulimia. Okay. Anorexia. Chronically suicidal. Self-injury. Rape victims. Service members who have PTSD.

So I do believe that, you know, there's certain established therapies that do work for those clinical conditions. And so your question is a good one. Like, how do you measure effectiveness? Well, you know, if I have somebody. who's binge eating and purging three times a week. And, you know, about a month in, they're down to one time. And, you know, about two months, they're down to, you know, maybe once a month.

And you learn the context in which it occurs and you're providing people's skills and they overcome bulimia and then you end the therapy, right? You accomplished your goals. But see, are most therapists or even psychologists willing to end clients or no, because that's, you are deliberately cutting off a stream of revenue for yourself. Now you're going to get me kicked out of my profession. That's the inherent conflict, right? So most therapists are either counselors or social workers.

The master's level, licensure. It's predominantly women. And a lot of them have private practices. And those private practices are, funded by these really good long-term high-functioning clients. And so the people who really need help aren't getting it because it's a lot harder work and there's higher liability and there's more crisis. So, for example, my clients who meet those criteria,

a lot of them will get my personal cell phone and we do something called coaching calls. coaching calls is like if you're in therapy you're learning skills and you should be taking what's being learned and apply it back into your life so if a client wants to self-injure like through cutting or wants to binge and perch and they're recognizing the cues internally and the stress that's around them they can actually reach out to me and i'll have a coaching call which is like five to ten minutes where we just develop a plan to get through it and i sometimes find that five to ten minutes is more effective than five, six therapy sessions, right? Because you're changing behavior.

But in the general therapy world, where high functioning people who don't meet these clinical conditions are going to talk about their relationships or their worries, their anxieties, their stress, and they're really doing well in life, they're great, they're easy clients, right? You're just sitting back and you're...

That's like friends I know that have been seeing the same therapist for five or six years and they're like, oh, I love my therapist. I just don't get that. For that long. It becomes a pseudo friendship. Yeah.

Right? And they feel really connected to that person and they're afraid to, they're afraid to end it even. Okay. So then what is your response? And I know this is not your client and so you don't know officially what's going on with her or whatever. But let's just, this is a celebrity. So it's like somebody who shares their issues publicly, I want to speculate. Demi Lovato is constantly talking about her eating disorders, her drug addiction, substance abuse, you know, self-harm.

bipolar. She has every single illness under, you know, under the sun, it seems, and never is getting better. I mean, what is going on with people like that that it seems like it's just always constant, you know, with drug addiction or self-harming behaviors and stuff? Yeah, I'm concerned, especially with younger people now, that it becomes part of their personal identity. And so if let's imagine that you turn to social media and you kind of proclaim your struggles. Yes, which is always happening. In some situations like in the communities that I serve,

you'll have like a teenage girl might cut herself on her arm and then post it on Instagram. And then you'll see the range of comments, which are, I love you so much. You didn't have to do that. You know, a lot of praise. And so you wonder in a situation like with Demi Lovato is she getting reinforced for that behavior? Like is she being treated kinder?

As a lot of fans like reach out to her and she gets like emotional support through struggle. And that's the thing that we've seen in this kind of disability culture that now exist is you get reinforced and praised if you are struggling. You get reinforced in praise if you're outside what is considered the norm. Yeah. A lot of kids in our younger generation feel like if they don't have some disability or minority-based status attached to them. They're boring. They're boring.

Anything they achieve is because of this inborn privilege. It's a real challenge. So you'll see people seek out psychiatric diagnoses to say, I'm not like everyone else and validates your their struggle. And that's a cultural shift that we've certainly seen in the last decade or so. Hey, little snuffalofagus. The first thing I do every morning is open my blinds. People want to know what's my morning routine.

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Go to Alevia.com and use code Alex 15 for 15% off. That's Alevia.com, A-L-E-A-V-I-A-D-com with code Alex 15 for 15% off. Yes, they didn't come to me and want to advertise. I asked them if I could advertise for them because that is how much I love it. Or find the link in the description. Being a clinical psychologist who says that there is zero evidence of a chemical imbalance in people who have depression, right there, people are going to want to write you off. And they don't understand you saying that. Yeah. You're saying as of being depressed, there must be something biological about it and it has to be treated medically. And you're saying there's no evidence of that? There's no evidence. No. I'm not saying that there's, they're not some biological factors that might influence. I mean, how do you separate the mind from the body? Like everything works together.

And we mentioned earlier that this is an unhealthy country, right? So if you're metabolically ill or you're overweight or you're not sleeping well and you're not exercising, well, that's going to impact your mood. There's no doubt that's going to impact your mood. And that's a factor. Like, I think you go and see a mental health professional. They should be looking at what you're eating. There are nutrient deficiencies that exist. Oh, I, yeah. I'm in a 100% agreement. One of the things that I've learned is that about 50% or more than 50% of the American population is magnesium deficient. Yeah. And some of the symptoms of magnesium deficiency is like anxiety and mood.

And the other thing is like there's certain times of year, you know, the winter months. We don't get enough sun exposure. Vitamin D is implicated obviously in our mood. So you socially isolate. you know, your sleep is off. You know, there's so many people I've met who their days and nights are off. Like they're sleeping during the day.

They're out at night. They're not getting any sun. That's going to affect them. But that's kind of common sense, right? That how we feel physically affects our mood. But what about the other aspects about the psychological component, the emotional aspect of depression? Yeah, I mean, if this, if there's not a chemical imbalance,

because you talked about earlier how there is a different between being sad and then actually depressed. So when I think actually depressed, it's those people that can get out of bed all day long and constant suicidal thoughts and things like that. So for those people, do you think that they should be on SSRIs? I don't. So what are they supposed to do? Well, let's think about all the things that are going to be important. So the most effective antidepressant that has ever been identified through research as what, you know? Is it sun? Exercise. Oh, okay. Okay. Better yet exercise under the sun. So there's a, there's a treatment called behavioral activation. We have to get people moving, right? So you think about this as depression is a state of being. So you might start off as sad. There might be a setback in life. How you respond to that can then lead into a clinical depression. And now I'm speaking for the majority of people here. Can someone argue that there is a subset, small suburbation? set of people who have this such serious depression that they become catatonic and they're in hospitals.

Yeah, that exists, but most people will never meet that person in their entire life. So let's speak to who your audience is. Let's speak to most people. I have never in my entire history met anyone who wasn't depressed for a reason. What does that mean? That means when you sit down and talk to somebody, their depression is related to legitimate and valid factors that exist in their life. Like what? Let's see.

My wife left me. I'm lonely. I have no friends. I'm not working. I don't have the type of career that I want. I don't like who I am. Nialistic. Right?

Like there's no meaning. There's no purpose in life. Imagine going through life with no sense of purpose. Oh, I see it all the time on Twitter. I mean, that is a mega thing with boys, I think, 18 to 25 right now is nihilism. Yeah, because you're going to suffer in life. Like, there's no doubt about it. You are going to go through difficult times.

If you can't attach any meaning to your struggle, that's a recipe for depression. So what about these people that are like, well, I do, I used to like to exercise. I used to like to go out with friends and stuff, but I just can't make myself do it. I've lost all, you know, want to be social or get out of bed. Do you exercise? Do I know. You don't. Well, there's a lot of people who don't want to exercise and do it anyway.

So the thing that when I work with my clients, I'm going to start from the beginning, I'm going to say we are creators of our own reality. So if you tell yourself you can't do anything, that will be your truth. You will live that out. And we have to start reclaiming some new truths that exist in how we approach our mental health. So does that also include, are you saying we need to be saying different things to our loved ones who are claiming to be depressed and refuse to get out of bed and stuff? Absolutely.

So what should you say to a loved one that is experiencing that? Well, I mean, I don't want to take away compassion. Compassion is always important. And the right professional help is always important if it's serious, right? So, but the most important thing is I want to let people know is be aware of what you create for yourself in your mind because that becomes real for you. So when some of my clients will get annoyed with me originally, like, when I start introducing some of these concepts

because they've attached to this idea that there is something wrong with them. They've attached to the idea that they cannot do something. And I get them to look at that as just an idea that they created and we can create any idea for ourselves, right?

If you want to create the idea you're unlovable, you're going to be unlovable. And when we talk about reasons why people get depressed, that certainly underlies it. I do not want to also dismiss history of trauma.

You know, when you come from an environment that's either abusive or neglectful or you've been a victim of like sexual violence or so forth like that. I think that leads to challenges to feel safe on this earth and to be able to connect with others. We are social beings. So you see a lot of depression is fueled by interpersonal challenges where people just feel, you know, extremely lonely and empty. And so overwhelmingly, you know, I'm going to guess that you're going to get a sense of, you know, a lot of people who fall into depression, fall into these ideas about themselves, and those ideas have to be challenged.

So I did a podcast on the mental benefit of doing hard things. And I think we are designed to do very difficult and challenging things. And once you do, you know, it shifts your realities. It expands your consciousness, for example. I remember the first time I started doing a podcast, which was not too long ago. I felt like I couldn't even communicate any ideas. Like I was bumbling all over myself. Same.

And I had to stop and restart and stop and restart until you overcome that. And then you do your next thing. I think we should be challenging ourselves in life. In retrospect to that, I feel the exact same way. And this is so strange. But it's because of that reason that I think that our playgrounds need to be challenging. Like we've eliminated monkey bars at a lot of these playgrounds and different things that rock walls or whatever. But those things that require a child, in my opinion, to get more

physically active that are challenging for them physically. I think that also helps them mentally. It's like everything is babyified. Without a doubt. I mean, that's such a good point. And that's what's going back to our public school conversation before is we have like inflated grades and helicopter parents, everyone's trying to protect their kids from struggle when in fact we want them to struggle because the learning takes place from overcoming it. If I can give any advice to young parents out there, continue to push your kids to do things beyond what their mind tells them they can do. Have them fail and celebrate it. See it as an opportunity for growth. You don't want to seek out comfort in life. I mean, that's another recipe for

depression is just seeking out constant comfort and never challenging yourself. Because if you're going at some point in your life, feel empty. So let's say your spouse, let's say, you know, some woman listening right now, she has a husband who is like that, like doesn't want to do anything but watch TV. She invites him to go out with their friends. He says, no, you know, let's go on a date night, no, want to have sex, no. Like what should a spouse say to their significant other who's dealing with this? They should shame them into doing what they want. No, I mean, I think that's a, that's a challenging life, right? And if you don't have open communication in a marriage and say what I need, you know, this is what I need.

And you have these clear, identifiable boundaries about what love is. You know, we do things for others. Love is about doing things for each other. Yeah. And if you don't have that, I think that's going to be a very difficult relationship. And I think marriage is really important. and you grow in marriage and you grow in relationship. And so you have to push each other.

And so if a wife is in that type of situation, I hope she finds a way to push her husband to be able to do things outside that level of comfort. Here is my burning question. Is anxiety a real mental illness? Oh, boy. So anxiety is a normal, expected emotion that we need. to survive and to thrive.

I am more concerned with people who don't experience anxiety or high levels of it versus those who do. I wish I would have known this stuff before I got Alexa Pro. I wish we would have done this podcast before. I mean, there are some people out there. Well, it's, that's, you know, in the realm of like sociopathic. Like, they're blood, they'll lie right to your face and their blood pressure will hardly ever even increase.

Anxiety is also performance enhancing. So before I came on this podcast, I want to be a little bit nervous, right? I didn't want to be too nervous that it impairs my ability to articulate my points. And I didn't want to be completely at ease where I don't remember important points that I want to communicate and share. So there's like a level. There's like a sweet spot for anxiety with performance that. You know, on a scale of 1 to 10, you know, like a 4 is great.

You want to be anxious before a big exam. You want to be anxious before a big meeting. And that drives you to prepare, right? But since we create our own realities, we also can create false alarms. We can create narratives in our head. We can create threats in our head. So is that what about like debilitating panic attacks where people are like freaking out, throwing up like, you know, have to sit on the floor and all that kind of stuff in a public place?

Yeah, that would certainly goes back to earlier like how people respond to their internal experience is more indicative of what becomes a disorder. So not the emotions themselves. So we talk about it like anxiety is the problem and we have to take a non-judgmental stance. anxiety is not problematic. Okay. But how one responds to their anxiety is problematic. So like panic, for example, panic is a fear of fear. So if you start feeling these signs or something, you start feeling these signs or something, symptoms internally of anxiety and that person views it as dangerous. That fear of fear intensifies their stress level to a panic like state, right? It's a dysregulated emotional system. Like your stress response system is in overdrive. And we have really good treatments for like a panic disorder. Like what? So it's interoceptive exposure. I would say 95% of people with a panic attack will see a mental health professional and never get like a cognitive behavioral treatment for it. Instead, they're going to get a talk therapy and a drug that's going to create dependence. So what I do with my clients is I induce that a panic attack in session.

And the way you induce a panic attack in session is you have to induce the internal physical sensations of anxiety that can be done through making them dizzy, running stairs, inducing hyperventilation, or it could be sometimes talking about something they're even suppressing or avoiding that creates a lot of fear or putting them in relationship to something that is fear-provoking. And then you help them cope with it. Like you bring in a spider or something? Right. Do you actually? I don't because I don't treat spider phobias. Oh, okay. If I did, that's what I would do. Okay. But I do treat some phobias. So, yeah, will do exposure, social anxiety disorder, for example, is a big one, like somebody talking on the phone or going out in public.

They have to be exposed to those situations, and you have to expose someone to a panic attack so they can change the way they respond to it. Okay, so this is what does it make sense to me. If depression and anxiety are not mental health conditions that you believe can be treated just by a drug, why do so many people experience relief after taking the drug? Well, so first of all, people should know that the placebo response in these drugs is really high. And in the drug trials themselves, it was very difficult for the drug companies to distinguish the drug group from the placebo group to create that difference. So they had to manipulate their studies in order to just create a small statistical difference on these outcome measures. between the two groups. But everything Alex also depends on the drug itself too. Like if you take a Xanax, for example, that's going to work, right? That is going to relieve you of any anxiety you're feeling for a period of time. They're also highly addictive. In other countries, you can't prescribe them for

over two weeks. In the United States, I see people who are benzodiazepine dependent. They're drug addicted because you're turning to a substance to alleviate all sense of anxiety. And I understand it. If you're like really anxious and, you know, you're panicking and it's just like an intolerable experience for you, that's very relieving. But you can very quickly turn into becoming drug dependent. Like an SSRI, I said it has an emotional numbing effect for some, right? That's a percentage of people. So in our field of study, we call this an amplified placebo resell. response. So to really determine whether a drug works or not, you have to create a randomized clinical control trial, placebo trial. So you don't know what you're getting, the drug or the

placebo. But when it comes to psychiatric drugs, everyone knows when you have it because it's a drug that acts on the brain, the psychoactive substance. So you know if you're taking Lexapro, most people do. And so the doctor. So blind is broken. And that's that amplified placebo response. But we don't talk enough about if we have this strong placebo reaction, what is happening there? If we can get somewhere between 35 to somewhere 60% of people overcome what they're going through from taking a sugar pill, what is actually happening and why aren't we utilizing that science to improve humanity? Right. So doesn't it go back to the idea of like we create our own realities? Like so much of this is something that we can induce within ourselves.

and if we believe we have a chemical imbalance and now they have a drug, and that's the use of the word, that's why antidepressant is so powerful. You tell somebody that they have a chemical imbalance, you give them an antidepressant drug. They call an antidepressant, plus we know the placebo response.

People feel better. The other thing is that emotional problems themselves are episodic. So, you know, you go through a couple weeks where you're really, really struggling and then it resolves itself. Like something happens in your life and it changes. And often you resolve the original problem that exists or something else happened and improved your mood.

If it's a placebo, then how do you explain withdrawal symptoms when people try to get off of them? Like if antidepressants are just a placebo and you just stop taking it, why can't people just quit cold turkey? Because that's an active substance that acts on the brain. So I'm saying the reaction to the drug is placebo, right? So we know that from when people,

just take the sugar pill. The drug itself is acting on the brain. So, as I said earlier, once you take any psychoactive substance, in time, the brain seeks out homeostasis, right? It needs that. So if you're taking a drug that's, let's say it's acting on serotonin, for example, well, then what happens to the rest of the body? What happens to the brain when you are now artificially inducing serotonin in the brain?

in the brain synapse. Well, it shuts down the receptors. It shuts down the natural production of the substance. So if you stop that, you were impacting your brain through that substance, and now you no longer have it. So imagine what is going to happen to the rest of your body. You're going to feel it.

And you know, they marketed these drugs as non-habit forming originally. And the reason why it's so wide, known is because globally there is just this very vocal group of harmed patients who have experienced that withdrawal and that dependence. And now we're just starting to be more aware of it. What's interesting, and this is part of the mass brainwashing, is let's say you go on Lexa Pro and then you miss a dose or two and you have suicidal thoughts. You go to your doctor. You know what your doctor's going to say? you need to get back on.

It's your mental illness. That's right. They're not going to see it as withdrawal. They're going to believe it's your natural mental illness reemerging itself. And here is evidence that you should be on this drug. And that's why people are on these drugs for life because these doctors who say the most irresponsible things from their own lack of knowledge. And that's how it was pushed. That was pushed throughout the 90s.

This is what the pharmaceuticals. sales people are saying. And this is what I tell doctors. I have these conversations with doctors. I say, that pharmaceutical salesperson is trying to get their trip to Hawaii by meeting their minimum amount they need a cell this year. They're looking for their bonus. That's not where you want to get your information from. You need to open yourself up to the totality of this research. You have to listen to patients. You have to listen to this movement. And you have to talk to experts in this area who are studying these drugs. But the thing is, is that that requires time that these doctors don't have. And that's where I feel like all this corruptness comes. That's why they're only doing 10 minute

appointments with each patient because they have to see so many people. And so they got to get in to see all these patients. And then to have time in their day besides dealing with their own families and their personal life, then you got to go and research drugs on your own. Like, it's just never going to happen. Well, I don't want to let them off the hook. Okay. So you have that position. in our society, we need to have a higher standard because they have an ethical duty to understand risks and benefits. And it's the law around informed consent. It's not an option. Yeah, so what should inform consent for antidepressants and adults really look like? So if you go to my substack, I actually created an article on what it actually should be based on available evidence,

but I'll just give you an overview. If you sat down with somebody, a doctor should get very clearly be able to communicate to you the risks, the benefits, and the alternatives. And I still haven't met anybody knowing the risks who would actually take to drug. The one major side effect that I certainly have to speak out to today, which we didn't get into is something called post-S-S-S-R-I sexual dysfunction. Have you heard of it? No. No.

And now that's debilitating because the emotional numbness that people experience, is experienced in the genitals. And there are a percentage of people who experience these sexual side effects are not able to achieve orgasm. They're not even able to have any sensation in their genitals. Is this only people that have been on it for a very long time? No, it can happen right away. And it lasts forever? And for a percentage of people, it's permanent. Here's another area. If I was an investigative journalist, I would also want to look into the impact of SSRIs that giving during sexual development stages for pre-pubescent and pubescent teenagers, and what impact that has on their own sexual identity and their gender identity. You know, that's another thing.

We really confuse kids and we impact their sexual development by giving a drug that numbs them and adults are now having this huge issue around PSSD. And doctors don't know what to do. So I don't know anybody who, if I sat down in front of him, I said, hey, I know you're not feeling well, and I know you're struggling. And I know you want to feel better. But if you take this drug, it might induce some emotional numbing. It might lead you to feel a little bit better. But the possibility exists. You might want to kill yourself or a family member.

And you might never, ever have sexual desire ever again. And you might never ever be able to achieve orgasm. And the emotional numbness just has long-lasting negative consequences. And that's the challenges that, you know, I've seen in clinical practice is when somebody has been on these drugs and they're not able to be intimate with a partner and they feel like they're really broken and there's something wrong with them and they don't ever trace it back to the drugs that was given to them when they were 16 years old. And that's the thing.

Well, you all see a 26-year-old who now identifies as asexual, but they were given the drug during a key developmental period and can't see themselves any other way. How long until your body becomes dependent on an antidepressant? To be safe, you know, it's probably within a week or two, right? I think everyone's different, and that's the challenge. We'll see doctors, and I've seen this in clinical practice, is that someone will be, and it depends on the drug, and it depends on the dose, and it depends on the individual. because this is another important piece. They've identified a variation of a metabolizing gene that can't metabolize these drugs.

Why is that important? Because it leads to toxic levels within the system. So some people take the drugs right away. And because whether they're a slow metabolizer, they can't metabolize it, they have significant side effects. And that's where we want to look into as well when we see like, in violence or suicide after the administration of a drug. I had a gentleman on my podcast by the name of David Carmichael. He was in his 40s when he took, I think it was Paxil for work-related stress. He ended up murdering his 11-year-old son. This is someone with no history of any mental

health-related problems takes the drug for sleep. And now he was acquitted by a jury in Canada because of the test that were done that showed he had toxic levels of that drug and they never tested him. This is something that does not occur. We don't get genetic testing for these drugs. So there's a percentage that just can't metabolize these drugs and we don't know who they are because there's no genetic testing. Okay, well this is interesting that you tell me about this guy because this reminds me of that woman recently in, I don't know, New England part of the United States that just killed her, what, three kids jumped out of the window, tried to kill herself. Remember it was You know who I'm talking about?

And she sent her husband away to the store so she could do all of this. And she thought she was going to die by jumping out of the window, but she survived. And they said she was on what, 16 different medications for postpartum depression? Criminal. It's criminal. The fact that she would be on that many drugs, obviously. I mean, that's, I mean, that would kill large animals, you know, that amount of drugs. What is your response to how we're dealing with postpartum depression?

and what's your thoughts on that in general? Yeah, I had Dr. Adam Urato on my podcast, who is a maternal fetal medicine physician. And when I said chemicals have consequences, and these are chemical compounds that were, you know, developed in a factory that work on the brain and they have a lot of negative effects, those were his words. You know, I remember some of these things from experts, and it's part of my job to be the messenger. So let's start with the things that are most concerning is that the drugs do break the placenta. And if you are taking an SSRI while pregnant, your baby is going to be born drug dependent.

And there is no evidence. I mean, this is what's most upsetting to me is there are so many young mothers. that are told from an irresponsible physician that if they've ever had experienced depressed mood or postpartened depression, that they should be on this drug. I didn't know that pregnant women were allowed to be on SSRIs.

I have clients who were told they should be. What? When it clearly affects the developing fetus, it's implicated in the development of autism. It's implicated in the development of a lot of other neurological conditions. And they're told that that it will have no effect

because this is the thing about the way this drug has been marketed is that the benefits have been overestimated and all the risks have been, you know, underestimated. And so many people don't know. I don't even think a lot of the doctors now. Now when it comes to postpartum, obviously that's a serious condition

and we need to do a lot better job of like supporting our mothers. So for the most part of postpartum condition, is going to be a combination of a number of things. Obviously, there's a lot of hormonal changes that occur postpartum that are natural and normal. But combine that with sleep deprivation. You know, combine that with potentially like other kids and responsibilities. And it could be a very difficult time if you are not supporting, you know,

the mother of a child during that time. If they're, you know, on their own, if there's a lot of stress or pressure, a number of other things. I think there's, we need to take it seriously and we need to, we really need to intervene with, with parents who are experiencing that. I just don't think it's putting them on drugs. So it's like what? You need to have more family support and things like that. Family support is really important. Sleep. You know, sleep is so important. Being able to bond with your baby and get and try to understand what may be impacting bonding with the baby. I mean, it's just like a lot of things, we have to understand the unique factors of what is happening with that individual.

To think that we're going to give a drug that, again, has all those side effects, including violence, including inducing negative mood, and think that is going to be somehow protective, is insanity to me. And so many people are controlled by fear. So a lot of some of this bizarre behavior or the violent behavior that we'll see on the news, we never consider that to be a drug reaction. We always, it always gets communicated as the underlying mental health condition. I don't always get sweet DMs, God knows, but I just got the sweetest one ever from a cute servative named Stacy who said, Alex, I bought the new Nimi skincare oil control line, didn't tell anyone, had only been using it for three days. And in the middle of a conversation

with somebody that I know, they said, sorry, but I have to tell you, your skin looks absolutely phenomenal. You're glowing. She was so excited and I was too hearing that from Stacey because I constantly hear this from you guys. Stacey is not the first. Mimi skincare is one of the only lines I've ever used where I felt like I saw a noticeable difference overnight and I truly believe it's because of their powerhouse ingredients like peptides, retinol, vitamin C and lactic acid. I'm hearing rave reviews on this oil control line. I am really dry so I stick to the hydrating stuff but I did try this. new vitamin C moisturizer recently and oh my gosh. I just got to tell you it's like magic cream. It really is a matifying makeup primer, which is ideal for oily skin. Nini skincare is for absolutely

everyone unless you don't like compliments and attention because people will compliment your skin in the middle of a conversation. Try Nimi at Nimi-skinkie.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. That's NimiSkinkare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off or find it in the description of the episode. So for those who want to get off SSRIs but are struggling or scared, what is your advice on steps that they could be taking? So very, very important to do this under medical supervision. However, with that being said, there's a good chance that your doctor doesn't understand the tapering schedule and may not taper you off slowly enough. These drugs can create great dependence and it's very serious and the slower the taper the better there's a i would check

out the inner compass initiative which is a organization that speaks to the science around this it's also a large support network what we've found is people are getting tapered too quickly and their withdrawal symptoms are pretty serious and some people can have what's called protracted withdrawal which is that, you know, they're unable to fully get off the drug because of the symptoms of withdrawal. So I know that you got off the drug fairly quickly. The recommendations now are usually like in like 10% increments monthly. So there are people who are taking a year, sometimes even more, to taper off the drug. And it depends on like what the drug is.

So there, you know, there are some because of the. half-life, the amount that it stays in your system. So if it leaves your system quickly, then the withdrawal effects seem to be much more worse and much more debilitating. And so slower, the better under medical supervision and understand the risks of discontinuing the drug. It is not your mental illness returning. It is the withdrawal response to a very serious psychoactive substance that is acting on the brain, which is, you know, one of the challenges with giving them to young people. When you give these drugs to young kids, they're often not taking the drug as prescribed. So they're often putting themselves into withdrawal for a period of time.

Or sometimes you just don't get it refilled. Like they just run out until they have to go get it refilled again. And the withdrawal response are so serious, just like what you experience. And they just then assume that they have this mental illness and they have to be on the drugs for life. Okay. So is it something to maybe consider for people wanting to get off antidepressants to go to a rehab like facility to go through the withdrawal period or not necessary? I wouldn't. Yeah, it's not necessary. I wouldn't go that far. It's just like a very, very slow taper. And what's interesting is this was driven by patients trying to figure out how to do this. There was a website called Surviving Antidepressants. And Adele Framer was her name. Really smart woman actually

just started this website out of the blue. She's working in the tech industry. And she experienced the horrific withdrawal that was then getting evaluated by a psychiatrist as a worsening mental illness. And they're adding on like bipolar disorder when she was just experiencing drug withdrawal. So she started a forum. And people were doing trial and error because the doctor's, still were denying the fact that these drugs even create dependence at all. Wow. And that's what you see from the community in which that I'm kind of connected to right now is that people had to figure this out on their own.

And I would still say that nine out of ten doctors are going to follow some taper schedule that was developed by the pharmaceutical industry and they're putting a lot of their patients in withdrawal. So you brought up bipolar disorder. Did bipolar disorder skyrocket when we started prescribing more antidepressants. Yes. Bipolar disorder didn't even exist in kids until we started prescribing them antidepressants and stimulants. So we start giving them drugs. We induce mania and then we created bipolar disorder for kids, which were, you know, from one particular doctor who was on the

he was on the payroll for pharmaceutical industry, Joseph Biederman. The other thing that that happened was they develop and this is what they do they add in more diagnoses so if you create a new condition you create a new disease well then you can drug it and this was called bipolar two you know others call it bipolar light yeah i i keep hearing this some people are bipolar one some or two what is that it's all nonsense right um even even the physician who was uh chair of the task force for dsm for regrets it i mean they were they were kind of bullied into it regret creating this term bipolar two? Yeah, but they haven't taken it out.

Yeah, what is that about? I think it was influenced by the pharmaceutical companies to sell what they call mood stabilizers or the class of mood stabilizers. So again, if you, this is what we see in our field, you create one drug, you market that drug. That drug has side effects. Now you can create another drug for that side effects. What does this mean being bipolar one versus bipolar two? So bipolar one is the traditional bipolar diagram. of mania and a severe, a severe depressive episode.

And is that something real that you believe exists? It's real. We don't understand why it happens. I think a lot of what is diagnosed bipolar 1 disorder is drug use. People who are drug addicted or using street drugs can induce mania and a number of other things. I'll put that to decide for a second. But it used to be called bipolar 1 used to be called. bipolar one used to be called manic depressive illness. And so you can even look historically in writings

it existed. I mean, there's people out there who might go into a manic episode and strip off all their clothes and howl at the moon and, you know, enter into psychosis or, you know, mania can be so debilitating that someone, you know, is sleeping two hours a night and, you know, gambles away their money, starts a business. The United client who just left their marriage, met a guy online, drove to Nashville and got married. And so, mania is real. Mania exists.

I'm just going to let everybody know that it's historically. It's a very rare condition, thank goodness. And when you take away those who are actually abusing substances, then it's even rare. So for those rare people that truly do experience mania, are drugs beneficial for them? In the short term, and so this is how I communicated, and I think a lot of other doctors who certainly understand and support what I'm saying will communicate in a similar way, you know, it's like an emergency medicine. So if you're in a manic state and we can give you a antipsychotic drug or some kind of anticonvulsant that's marked as a mood stabilizer, and that gets you out of that manic state temporarily, well, then that's a good thing. right? It could stabilize somebody. The problem is the drugs aren't very effective long term. And so again, they're told that, all right, you have this illness now and you have to be on these drugs for life.

Okay. And the truth of the matter is that's not the case. If you look historically, like back to hospital records, like 85% of people who had that diagnosis and were hospitalized experienced only one episode. So we don't have this evidence that it was like this chronic condition that you needed to be on these drugs for life for. And we still don't understand the origins of it. So there's actually a psychiatrist out of Harvard, Dr. Christopher Palmer, who is treating severe mental illness, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder with a ketogenic diet because he believes it's a manifestation of metabolic illness.

Wow. And so he's getting people off their drugs. And these symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar one, are going into remission on a ketogenic diet. it and he wrote a book called Brain Energy, which explains the entire science around why they exhibited those symptoms. So any point in history, you can look back and you thought one thing to be true and then time and science evolves and you realize something else isn't to be true. But let's go back to bipolar 2 because this is really important. Just like anyone can be identified as ADHDs, anyone can kind of be identified with bipolar 2 disorder because now mania has been

turned into hypomania. And what's hypomania? Well, hypomania is just this nebulous designation of anyone who has some elevated mood, right? Are you kidding? Elevated energy, which could be anyone in the population. I mean, we're going to be talking for a couple hours, right? Yeah. Maybe I'm hyper fixated on, you know, mental illness. But just us talking about something for two hours straight, you know, you can, you know, the wrong person can say, well, that that looks like hypomania. Or you can. You know, you can go through a period of time where you have a decreased need for sleep. And that's what they asked these questions that could be widely applied to any situation. So, you know, to get here for this podcast, we had a 615 flight out of Newark, which was 415 Phoenix time.

So, you know, we had to leave pretty early to get here. And then we got into Phoenix yesterday. And we went and hiked the Mount Camelback, Camelback Mountain, whatever that is. But I felt great, you know. I didn't need full night of sleep. I felt really good after that over that hike. I was going to have a great conversation with you. I have this elevated mood. You know, and then, you know, I have this, right? And I can speak for a couple hours. You communicate your experience to the wrong person. The wrong person will identify you as bipolar. I mean, that's terrifying. The worst of it, though, Alex, is I think what we're doing to like artists and sensitive people. And women. More women. than men. So women by nature are generally more empathic, experience their emotions more intensely. I communicate that.

That's a gift. That's a gift by nature. There's a reason for that biologically. Women are more social creatures generally than men. So like if there's a change in their social structure, they might experience their emotions more intensely around it. Do you know how easy that is to go to a psychiatrist who's just doing a symptom checklist,

misinterpret that as like bipolar disorder or if you're a trauma victim. So you are, you know, a young lady who had to experience like sexual trauma in some way and you have PTSD symptoms, they all overlap. So that's the problem with the diagnostic system in psychiatry is it's so pseudoscientific and you use it as like a symptom checklist like any disease. But see, this is what would freak me out. If I'm listening to this and I'm somebody that has been diagnosed with bipolar, I'm like, Like, okay, great. So if so many people are overdiagnosed with this or if I'm somebody that's been now on a drug because of allegedly having bipolar two, whatever that is, like,

how do you even know who do I go to then to find out if I really have it? If so many doctors don't even know and they're still diagnosing people with it. Like, what do you even do? Well, there's some red flags. If someone wants to give you that diagnosis in 15 minutes or 45 minutes even, that's problematic. So time matters. So for me to do an evaluation, it starts with an hour and a half and then I have subsequent sessions after that, historical context matters, which is challenging to because you're trying to ask somebody to go back sometimes years. And, you know, if you ask them a lot of questions and nothing that they're communicating would reflect mania, but they have this history of like a trauma event and then

after the trauma event, they experienced this and that, and that. And it just gets misrepresented and misinterpreted. Basically, you have to be with somebody who's willing to take the time to get to know you and to ask the critical questions in a collaborative way that's empirical, right, going through the evidence. And this is what I say to all my clients. First of all, you're the expert on you. I'm going to ask a lot of series of questions. And we're going to go back. And I want you to suspend any judgment on any label that you've provided yourself because they're constructed, right? These are something that we've modernly constructed into our culture as if they're real. They're not discrete legitimate medical illnesses.

Psychiatric conditions are not like, you know, strep throat, right? They're not as objective, right? We're often getting information from somebody's own historical experience and what they were. reflect internally. So someone's truly who does struggle with bipolar mania, how long do you think that they should actually be on those drugs? Like no longer than six months or what? I mean, it's a really good question and I think it needs to be done with a careful kind of approach. So first of all, I want to look at the data. So if 85% of people only had one episode, why would I assume that that episode is going to be chronic or prolonged without that evidence?

I did a podcast episode where we entitled it Bipolar Disorder from 1 in 500 to 1 in 50. So what has happened where the diagnosis goes from one in every 500 people to one in every 50? Well, they say we're just more aware of it to diagnose it. That's what they say. Yeah. I mean, that is what they're going to communicate. And then how does it go from something where there's a recovery rate of 85% to 30%? And that's the, those are the questions that I had to ask myself as a clinician.

I'm part of a field that if we look at the data, you're more likely to worsen by going into it. And that's a fact. I mean, that's an absolute fact. And I have to acknowledge that to be able to sleep at night. So to be able to work with people, I have to protect them from the ideas of that system. Okay. So like for example, there's a lot of things that can create a manic episode. One of my clients was placed on a steroid and entered into a manic episode. And then she was diagnosed as bipolar disorder. I had another client where she was put on a migraine medication that induced those same kind of homicidal suicidal thoughts. Never had it before, but was describing like I have this inner sense that I should kill myself. or I should kill other people and an irritation. And nothing changed other than the fact they went on a migraine medication.

And I said, just hold on a second. Let me do a little deep dive into this drug. And then you go and you look at the side effect profile. And yes, that's a side effect profile. So I'm like, all right, this is serious because she feels like she's at risk of ending her life. I need to get her to be monitored at the hospital. So I call the doctors who prescribed the medicine. And I said, listen, please, please, whatever.

you do, don't admit her psychiatrically. She's having an adverse drug reaction and I want her to be observed. And because I know what happens in our hospitals, I said to this young woman, you got my phone number. If they're trying to admit you psychiatrically, have them call me. You call me right away. They strip search her. They take away her cell phone. So she's unable to contact me. And they put her into the psychiatric section of the hospital. And, you know, this is someone who had a trauma history. So it's almost like you're retramatized again because you're getting strip searched. You're taking away your own freedom.

You don't trust that they're in your best interest. But if she can't call you, then what do you do? You just found out about this later after she left? Found out after she was discharged. And the only recourse I have is to call the hospital and file a complaint. but I just imagine how many people are being treated that way. If you have a child who's on ADHD medication or antidepressants that you want to get off, what is the best way to get a child off of that medication safely?

Similar to what we were talking about tapering. So under medical supervision, very slowly, take your time. You need to be able to make sure that your child's reaction to that taper as you're starting to discontinuing that drug is safe. right so very simply they're similar with all psychiatric drugs taper slowly before anybody decides to start taking any type of drug what kind of question should they be asking their doctor what are the risks what are what's my diagnosis how did you come up with that diagnosis would you take this drug yourself ooh or would you give it to a a family member of yours right

what's the worst thing that could happen to me if I do take this drug? What are the alternatives? Instead of doing this, what other options do I have? What do you really know about the effectiveness of it? How did it come to market? How long should I be on this drug and why? And I give this advice all the time. Make them work.

You know, ask them critical questions because that you're going to find out 95% of the doctor. doctors have no clue. And then you want to get out of there and you want to get out of there fast and you want to find a second opinion. But get a second opinion anyway. But if they're unwilling to, if they're unwilling to sit down with you and explain informed consent and they ask questions, because this is what you're going to see from the worst of them. They're going to think there's something wrong with you. You're paranoid now. Oh, gee. See, that's the stuff that freaks me out. Yeah. So you start asking all these questions. Now it's a sign or symptom of your own mental illness,

which is why psychiatry in itself is really problematic, in my opinion, in a free society. Yeah, I was going to ask if you trust the majority of professionals in the mental health space today at all. Absolutely not. I mean, you can understand that from my, from everything I know at this point, like from being able to have this conversation with you, started with my skepticism, started with my answering questions or asking questions, and then it was the research. and once I was deep diving into the research, it became an obsession for me. Well, you might be bipolar. Or obsessive compulsive disorder or something.

Like, it's so easy. They've medicalized every aspect of being human. But in the psychiatry world, it's so easy to take away your rights. And that's why you have to be careful. Like, you just have to be careful with the person that's in front of you in the manner in which they're going to judge a very normal. reaction. What should mental health care in the United States actually look like? Good question. First of all, it should probably fit with, you know, a model of care that, you know, is similar to functional medicine. Yes. I've completely taken myself out of the allopathic medicine medical

system. I don't go to those doctors anymore. Like maybe if I have broken leg or get a knee surgery or something emergency, I think maybe we're really good at patching people together. But As far as restoring health, you know, we're not really good at that. And I've transitioned to functional medicine, and I have some functional medicine doctors who've been on my podcast. And now that's an approach that I can understand. We are going to look at you as a holistic being. That is both spiritual and psychological and environmental and emotional and everything impacts

your health. Your lifestyle is going to be evaluated. We're actually going to run tests to actually see if we can. can identify something medically. Could be hormones, could be blood test, a number of factors. We're actually going to take a scientific approach that just doesn't happen in our health care system. We're going to look at your foods you eat, nutrient deficiencies, the impact of stress,

all those things. So that's like a functional medicine approach. I'd like to think of myself as like a functional psychologist. And how do you find somebody like you locally, somebody that wants to switch over? What do you ask to see if they are like a functional psychologist? Well, if they're throwing quick diagnoses at you and they're recommending drugs right away, you know, that's just the alopathic medical model. That's the worst of it when you have therapists who haven't even studied this stuff or psychologists telling clients to get on psychiatric drugs. The worst is in the eating disorder realm.

they are giving anorexic, starved teenagers, starved brains, an antidepressant, not based on anything that was ever evaluated or studied, just because it somehow was created in the medical literature, and there's no evidence behind it. When you know the food is medicine, it's insane the things that they make up. Like here, it'll make you easier, it'll make it easier to eat. You know, all these lies, you know, you say a lie. over and over again, it actually becomes a collective truth.

And that's how the therapists start recommending it too. Amongst other things, like fear is provoked. Like, you know, you have to take your licensure exam, and they're always pushing things to a medical doctor. And everyone asks me those questions, is how do you find people like me? And I'm sure they're out there, but you have to really investigate and vet your professionals.

It doesn't matter whether it's a teacher, it doesn't matter whether it's a medical professional or a therapist, ask them the critical questions. Why do people suffer? Do you do virtual clients or no? So in my home community, I see face to face. It's just so much more value. I told you the clinical population that I'm working with.

And what city are you in if anyone's local that wants to see you? I'm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is in the Lehigh Valley. So we're about an hour north of Philadelphia. We're about 90 minutes from downtown Manhattan. So it's kind of like in the middle there on the, border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but I do do consults and some coaching. So as I have spoken out more, people have been, you know, contacting me and emailing me. Oh, I can't imagine. Just for some, sometimes it's just for like a one or two session consult. So what I'll do is

some Zoom consults and I'll meet with people or families and give them some of the information that we're talking about right now. Like so, you know, what? of the challenges that I do have is they ask me these questions. We're in San Antonio, Totoio, Texas. Where can I find someone like you? And I don't know. And there's a privacy to this entire field. Maybe you need to create some kind of network. I do. Did I just touch on something that you're secretly doing that we can't say? Well, this is. We can edit this out. No, there's no secret because all this goes in stages. Okay. And I just recently started a YouTube channel where I create videos.

Scientific research is communicated to help informed, you know, just like the consent process. However, we are heavily restricted. I don't know if you heard this story. No, I don't know. We create this YouTube channel, and I'm really proud of this video. It's called the safety and efficacy of antidepressants for youth. We did our research.

All right, we know that YouTube videos have to be like seven minutes long for people to digest it. and I was very responsible about it. So I would flash on these research studies and I would like highlight the conclusions of the research from the authors, something that any parent would want to know if they were going to put their kid on an antidepressant. We launch it, you know.

I have a pretty strong following on Twitter. So I thought, okay, we can really share this information to the general public. It'll be part of the mission. The very first day we put out that video on YouTube. They terminate the entire channel. No warning.

We did our research. We looked into their community-based guidelines. We didn't violate their community-based guidelines. They never gave us any warning at all. Just terminated the entire channel. And this is where I think it was divine intervention. Best thing that could have happened to us. Really?

So I post the video on Twitter, which is X now. And it went viral. And so like Joe Rogan retweeted it. I was going to say you are a perfect candidate to go on Joe's show. That's what Ali Beth Stuckey said when I was on there. Really? Yes. So I want to.

Joe Rogan, if you're listening, right? I have a lot to talk about. But he mentioned it on his show, right? He mentioned my video and it getting taken down. So like Jordan Peterson retweeted it. Brett Weinstein. So it got tons of views and it got the exposure that I was looking for, right? Because people have to know this information because I've had to talk to too many mothers who lost their child from suicide after the induction of an antidepressant drug. And I know that I have in my heart,

that is something I need to do. I need to speak out on this. I need to communicate. It's part of my life purpose when we're talking about purpose. And so I'm willing to take all the negative press or called dangerous or whatever it is for me to speak truth. And so that allowed that video to get way over a million views and to highlight a very important issue. So, you know, praise God that, you know, people can get to this YouTube channel. It's heavily restricted. We'll post videos and like 25 people view it. It makes no sense. right so but you can go to radically genuine YouTube and check it out okay great and then what is your handle on Twitter at dr. McPhillen very easy uh D-R McPhillan mcfifillin M-C-F-I-L-N and um we also now

have an Instagram we just started that uh at radically genuine as well and substack at radically genuine love the substack thank you I mean that's another part of the mission like we have to get people this information and um you know one of the things that I've heard from people that I've talk to is you have to develop a network. You have to be able to find like-minded people who are anti the system, you know, who want to get back to some common sense approaches and want to think about the complexity of just what it means to be human and normalize some things without assigning a psychiatric label to it and then falling down the path of being put into the system with their drugs and with their diagnoses. And the only way I can do that is,

is to try to develop a community around it. If you could sum up in one word, what people need to know about the way that we tackle mental health in the United States, what would you use? Corrupt, fraudulent, dangerous. I mean, attach the dangerous label, the negative label to it.

You know, sometimes I think about it. If I was a foreign adversary and I wanted to, create or undermine an entire culture that was thriving. That was an economic power that was free and independent. You would create TikTok and then diagnose people in 30 seconds with ADHD. Exactly, right? I would start it with an indoctrination of young people to completely fragilize their existence and to create them as ill and dependent. And that's what's happening. I mean, look at the look at the statistics.

You know, are, are, we have a culture where, um, you know, people want to get a psychiatric label. That's something that has,

um, that that's just twisted. Like I, I can't even begin to, I can't even begin to wrap my mind around what I am seeing in, in clinical practice. And I want to plug a book that's about to come out. Abigail Shriar is the author.

I love Abigail. She was the second guest I ever had on this show for, um, Yeah, her book on the transgender, you know, epidemic with young girls. What's the new book? It's called Bad Therapy. And I think it's coming out in February, March, or April, like some time around that. Oh, I'm excited.

I'll have to get her back on to talk about that. You have to. And I, you know, she interviewed me for that book. So I can't wait to read it. Yeah. Because she's going to speak to what has happened where this is a, you know, we're a couple generations away from like the baby boom. who fought World War II and created a, you know, a revolution and that helped allow the United States to become, you know, the power that they are.

You know, this was a country of resilience, right? And so what has happened that a generation of people have not been able, did not have to experience the Great Depression, did not have to be sent over to fight to foreign wars, that are this fragile and debilitated and have such a, a hard time coping with life. And I think I think the premise of her book is, is around a lot of this indoctrination and the mental health system. So I can't wait for it to come out. And I, you know, I hope you get her on and she gets a lot of publicity for this book. Yeah, me too. I'm glad that

you told me that. I'm going to reach out to her and be like, hey, Dr. McPhillan told me that you have this book coming out. I want to have you back. Thank you so much, Dr. McPhillan for all of this. It's been amazing. Well, thank you. I mean, I appreciate you talking about these issues. I think they're really important. This was the last episode of season five. What an absolute banger to go out on. Every Friday, I speak to a different fascinating person or expert, all with the goal of not only educating and entertaining women,

but to actually lead a countercultural movement that conservatives typically only talk about. The spillover is about walking the walk. If you have more questions about what was discussed today, join the Kut Servatives Facebook group. The link is in the show notes. The spillover is back next Thursday at 9.5. PM Pacific or Friday midnight

Eastern anywhere you get your podcast with season six I can't believe it coming up in the next two months pediatricians across America are fighting against transitioning minors how to build a completely non-toxic house from the ground up will speak to a woman who thinks women's suffrage was a mistake

and more subscribe to real Alex Clark on YouTube to watch every interview and if this episode made you think differently about our current mental health system please let us know with a five-star review I'm Alex Clark and this is the spillover Love you, mean it, bye.