Some More News - SMN: Mental Health And Mass Shootings

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Hi. In today's episode, we look at the state of mental health care in the U.S., why mental health is always used as a scapegoat after mass shootings, and how we could better support the mental wellbeing of people in general. Executive Producer - Katy Stoll Directed by Will Gordh Written by Katie Goldin Edited by Gregg Meller Producer - Jonathan Harris Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker Post-Production Supervisor - John Conway Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales Graphics by F. Clint DeNisco Head Writer - David Christopher Bell Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews

. Hello, this is Some More News, a show. I'm Cody Johnson. Is that a T? It's weird. Sorry, I'm Cody Johnston. It doesn't seem right, but okay. And here's some news.

Mental illness and how it's coming for you and your family, especially your pets. But this is also a mental illness problem. If you look at both of these cases, this is mental illness. These are really people that are very, very seriously mentally ill. We know what does prevent crime, which is going after felons and fugitives and those with serious mental illness. It seems to me there are two broad categories that underscore the problem.

Mental illness and school safety. We have a mental, we have a problem with mental health illness in this community. Terrifying stuff. So mental illness is the cause of all violence in our very normal and healthy society, where we have healthy things like US senators taking adorable family Christmas photos with guns. Spoilers though, this isn't an episode about guns. This isn't really an episode about mass shootings either. I mean, we just did that and it was a wicked drag, bro. No, this is an episode about mental health, specifically mental illness and what it is exactly.

And also when the media and politicians choose to talk about it versus when it's largely ignored. More specifically, how the only time politicians and corporate media stopped to wonder what we're doing to address mental illness is in the wake of some shocking violence, whether it's a mass shooting or some other kind of mass shooting. And that's, you know, bad.

By always having this discussion of mental illness when a mass shooting happens, what we're doing is conflating mental illness with someone who does something evil. And for the sake of dispelling this stigma, let's start there. No foreplay, we are getting elbow deep in the question. Are all evil acts a result of a mental illness?

Well, let's find out on Cody's wacky world of atrocities. Ah, it's no fun graphics for that one. I specifically asked for fun graphics for that, like Hitler doing a cartwheel or something. It's fine, I'm not, it's fine. It's fine. Anyway, there are all sorts of violent evil acts that happen in modern US society that we don't attribute to mental illness.

Like say some guy whose name rhymes with Morge Bush or maybe George Mush lied and got us into a war in the Middle East that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. And then that guy jokes about not being able to find the WMDs he knew weren't there because again, he lied about it. And then years later, he makes a cute little Freudian slip

about his own crimes and laughs about it. The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine. All right, anyway. Is that guy mentally ill? To glibly admit to and joke about your own war crimes. Or what about our current president

whose sanctions against Afghanistan may end up killing even more civilians through poverty and starvation? Is this a sign of mental illness? Is everyone in Congress who supports these mass death sanctions also mentally ill? What about oil CEOs who have been knowingly destroying the planet for profit with a massive and unknowable

death toll of not just humans, but every species of living organism? Or fun stuff like the CIA learning from Nazis how to torture people and then doing said torture for decades, despite torture generally being a very flawed method of extracting information. Are all of these powerful people mentally ill? Some people may say, yes they are, either as a joke

or under some assumption that only someone with big quotes, something wrong with their brain could be capable of evil. But that's not really true. And it's actually a dangerous way of thinking. All of those state sanctioned war criminals, torturers and planet destroyers may lack empathy. Maybe you could describe them as psychopaths, but that's not what it means to have a mental illness

or mental health issue. My writer for this episode wants me to say that her OCD might make her quadruple check to make sure the stove is turned off, but that's a far cry from being a war criminal. Although it kind of sounds like she might be setting up an alibi. Also, she wanted me to say Cody loves pee-pee and poo-poo.

Wait, ah! No, I do not love pee-pee and poo-poo. I don't even like pee-pee and poo-poo. Yes, sure, I respect pee-pee and poo-poo, but that's different from liking pee-pee and poo-poo. So what is a mental illness or a mental health disorder? That's not as straightforward a question to ask because it's like asking what it means

to have a physical illness. Someone with a broken leg and someone with cystic fibrosis have very different problems and very different treatments. So wide, wide range of mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, OCD, schizophrenia, seasonal affective disorder, dissociative disorders, eating disorders, feeling disorder, thought tremors, panic disorder, phobias, postpartum depression, or PTSD.

And that's just a fraction of all of the diverse mental health issues that exist. They're like Marvel characters in that there are way more than you realize and have too many variations to keep track of, and you couldn't tell if I made them up. Astro spider, real. Feeling disorder couldn't tell if I made them up. Astro spider? Real.

Feeling disorder and thought tremors? Made them up. So while mental health disorders can be comorbid, meaning more than one of them occur together for the same person, they can also be very different. The experience of someone who has OCD may be very different from someone who has PTSD. But also, the experience of one person with OCD may be very different from another person who also has OCD. It's as if the human mind is actually like

super complex and unique, which makes mental health very complex and difficult to neatly fit into tidy categories. So to make a declarative statement like people with mental illnesses are more dangerous doesn't make any sense, any more than saying people who watch movies will definitely like the movie Moonfall.

Of course, that's not true. Only people with good taste in movies will definitely like Moonfall. Out now on Blu-ray and Ultra HD. You're so right, Title Monkey. Out now on Blu-ray and Ultra HD. Couldn't have said it better. So the only unifying definition of a mental illness

is somewhat broad, which is any disorder that affects your thinking, mood, or behavior that causes you distress, disability, pain, or loss of freedom. This is the key to what makes something a mental health disorder versus simply having a different way of thinking, not conforming to a certain norm, i.e. being neurodivergent. Having a way of thinking

that is unusual is not a disorder if it doesn't cause the person any distress or suffering. That definition of mental illness may seem unsatisfyingly generic, but unfortunately, the breadth of mental health issues means that getting more specific would exclude certain disorders. Also, the line between a mental health disorder versus being neurodivergent without a disorder can get a little mushy. Someone who is neurodivergent may suffer distress, disability, pain, or loss of freedom, and so using the aforementioned definition, one might be tempted to say this is a mental health disorder. However, what if those negative factors aren't inherent to the neurodivergent person's experience, but caused by rigid societal structures.

We will talk more about how society and culture interact with mental health issues and neurodivergence later, but first, back to the vilification of mental health disorders, yay! Yay is actually French, for this topic fills me with deep despair, look it up. So, why aren't mass shooters automatically mentally ill based on the definition of mental disorders?

If mental disorders are defined by loss of freedom or suffering, wouldn't this include mass murderers who lose their freedom in jail and cause suffering? Well, not really because the key to how we define mental disorders is how it affects the actual individual with the disorder, their own distress or negative impact on their life. After all, there are a million reasons why someone might commit a murder

and be fully cognizant of their actions. So what it comes down to is that someone can have a perfectly neurotypically functioning brain, personally be mentally healthy, and still commit mass murder. For example, Adolf Eichmann was one of the main architects

of the Holocaust, the bureaucrat who engineered the functioning of the death camps. He was the subject of Hannah Arendt's "'Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Banality of Evil," and was once thought to be a cog in the machine, a bureaucrat who merely followed orders. Injustice, not vengeance, author Simon Wiesenthal said, "'The world now understands the concept of desk murderer

We know that one doesn't need to be fanatical sadistic or mentally ill to murder millions That it is enough to be a loyal follower eager to do one's duty While Arendt and Weisenthal were correct that someone with a banal personality was still capable of evil acts They may have been wrong about a lack of sadism on Eichmann's part, or that his evil was just in being a meek bureaucrat following orders. Recently uncovered tapes of Eichmann reveals that he was actually super into the mass murder

genocidal aspects of the Holocaust. In 1957, four years before he went to trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann was recorded about how he really felt about the Holocaust. Every fiber in me resists that we did something wrong. I must tell you honestly, had we killed 10.3 million Jews, then I would be satisfied and say, good, we have exterminated an enemy. That is the truth. Why should I deny it? Wow, what a dick. So he wasn't a mere sheep who followed orders. He was proud of his role as an architect of genocide.

Perhaps it's uncomfortable to confront this fact, but evil can't be explained only by mental illness, nor can it always be explained by simply following orders. Someone can do evil acts, be sadistic, ideologically believe in the murder and genocide of people and be proud of those things, and yet have such a quote, normal personality that they are able to fool people for years

that they're simply a meek bureaucrat in order to try to escape punishment. This is not a case of mental illness or mindless obedience. It is deliberate calculating thought and actions. Just as someone can have a physically healthy body and a body that conforms to societal standards and commit sadistic acts with that healthy body, someone can have a healthy mind,

one that conforms to societal standards and commit sadistic acts with that healthy mind. Did we learn nothing from Armie Hammer trying to non-consensually involve people in his cannibalism fetish? We have nothingensually involve people in his cannibalism fetish. We have nothing against consensual and safe cannibalism fetishes. So right again, Title Monkey,

we have nothing against cannibalism fetishes. If anything, we encourage it, he says unconvincingly. But maybe the reason that we don't call mass murderers like Eichmann mentally ill is that they stay safely behind a desk. Is the distinction between Eichmann and a mass shooter that the latter is more viscerally shocking, more hands-on, and that's what makes it a mental illness

rather than simply an act of sadism? Well, there are times when we don't blame mass shootings on mental illness, and that's when we call it terrorism. Or rather, when the mass shooter is brown or Muslim, then it's suddenly not about mental illness, and that's when we call it terrorism. Or rather, when the mass shooter is brown or Muslim, then it's suddenly not about mental health, but about the dangers of terrorism. And so thanks to good old American racism, in those cases, we are miraculously able to acknowledge

that violence can be ideologically motivated and have nothing to do with mental illness. But of course, most attacks in the US aren't done by Muslim terrorists. Since 9-11, have you heard of it? The far right have killed more people in the US than Islamic extremists. In fact, your average terrorist in the US

looks more like Tom Holland than Osama bin Lalland. They are young white men. Very strange how we don't do travel bans on all white guys or Christians, until we can figure out what's going on. Instead, the FBI is adamant in defending Judeo-Christian values and claiming that followers of the Bible

had grown less violent than followers of Islam while conducting broad surveillance on mosques. They spend most of their time focusing on international terrorism, even though the far right poses a much more looming threat. Again, very strange chin scratches indeed. So while anything done by a brown person is considered terrorism in all caps,

whenever a white man commits the same crime, even one where they explicitly left a political manifesto, the media always seems to be more concerned with their state of mind. We often get baffling articles about how shocking it was that a quiet, smart person, a star scholar and athlete could do such a thing. In these cases, lone wolf is often used as a way

to bypass saying far right-wing terrorist. Lone wolves who seem to talk to each other and agree on lots of things. But by ignoring the obvious ideology, this creates a question of motivation. And thus we get the scapegoat of mental illness. In the case of the 2019 Poway Synagogue shooting, Reverend Duke Kwan, a Presbyterian pastor in Washington,

wanted to have a conversation about how concerned he was at the presence of Christian theology in the shooter's manifesto. It was a call for introspection by church leaders. But when he posted on Twitter his first mistake, he was met with what the Washington Post described as intense debate among evangelicals. Some castigated Kwan for casting blame

on the church in any way. Some argued must be mentally ill. Many sought to make clear that antisemitism is incompatible with biblical belief. In this case, when evangelicals were asked to look at the possible flaws in their own institutions and belief systems, they refused and decided instead to take the easy way out.

In other words, the thing we all already know, that blaming these events on mental illness is a really quick and easy way to avoid the difficult conversation. More specifically, toxicity in popular, often right-wing ideologies. So on Saturday, after he made good on his longstanding threat to open fire into a crowd,

left in a 180-page letter that he said would explain his motives. You've probably heard this document described as a racist manifesto, but that's not quite right. It's definitely racist, bitterly so. Reduces people to their skin color. That's the essence of racism, and it's immoral. But what he wrote does not add up to a manifesto.

It is not a blueprint for a new extremist political movement, much less the potential inspiration for a racist revolution. Anyone who claims that it is, is lying or hasn't read it. Instead, B****'s letter is a rambling pastiche of slogans and internet memes, some of which flatly contradict one another. The document is not recognizably left-wing or right-wing. It's not really political at all. The document is crazy. It's the product of a diseased and organized mind. Yeah, you super need that to be true, don't you, Tux? But hey, you're right that his manifesto wasn't the blueprint for a new political movement.

Nothing new about what he believed in. Torker is talking about the recent shooting at the Buffalo grocery store, which was done by someone who had a white supremacist manifesto about the great replacement theory. That's the idea that white people are being replaced by black and brown people, either due to intermarriage or immigration.

Gee, I wonder where he heard of such a thing. He specifically targeted black people in his mass murder. This mass shooting had a clear ideological motivation and yet still the conversation continued to turn to mental health. Not just on the right either, the failing New York Times made sure to note in their headline that the shooter was held

for a mental health evaluation a year ago. While it's good to report on facts, having something appear in the headline of the article comes with an implication. In this case, that this mental health evaluation was of such significance to the shooting that it may be an explanation for it. For context, this mental health evaluation

was due to threats he made against his former school, and again, simply threatening violence is not sufficient evidence of a mental health disorder. He was ultimately deemed not a threat and released. And yet PBS also laments that he may have fallen through the gaps that perhaps if he had been scrutinized closer, he may have gotten help from the mental health system. But this all assumes he actually is mentally ill.

It's possible he is, but equally possible he is not. What we do know is that he has likely been radicalized by white supremacist extremists based on his manifesto. Could help from the mental health system have stopped a white supremacist extremist? Maybe, although this idea that a white supremacist radical could be stopped with mental health checks doesn't really exist for Islamic extremists.

In fact, some research indicates that one of the best ways to interrupt violent radicalization of an individual is through informal interventions by family and friends. And to prevent violent radicalization on a wider scale, the Geneva Center for Security Policy suggests deconstructing and delegitimizing extremist far-right propaganda online.

So it's hard to say whether mental health intervention would have stopped this shooting when we don't even know whether the shooter had a mental health disorder. Or if he did, whether that mental health disorder had anything to do with the shooting. But focusing on the mental health angle makes us ignore other possible solutions

that may be far more effective. Also, you know, it's a way to avoid talking about gun control, which the unbiased and totally neutral NRA loves to do. But the truth is that mental health issues are not a good predictor of who will go on to commit violent gun crimes or mass shootings. According to a paper in the American Journal

of Public Health, surprisingly little population level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes. Less than 3% to 5% of US crimes involve people with mental illness. And the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average

for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Hey, you know what actually is a pretty good indicator of gun crime? Domestic violence. In this study, researchers found that over 68% of mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 were done by perpetrators who had a history of domestic violence or who had also killed

at least one partner or family member. It's weird though, that domestic violence is ignored as a predictor of mass shootings. I mean, why oh why would law enforcement ignore the warning signs of domestic violence? Gee, why are they focusing on mental illness instead? Gosh, weird, more chin scratchies, so strange. Of course, mass shootings aren't the only things

we love to scapegoat mental illness for. And so we're gonna explore that after a few ads, just a bit of ads, a little bit of ads, you'll see. And then we come back and you see more of this. Hey, you with the face, do you sleep? At the very least, I'm sure you lay in bed and pretend to sleep so your partner doesn't realize you're secretly a robot sent from outer space,

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Open an Aspiration account at aspiration.com slash more news debit and move your money out of fossil fuels. Help save the planet with your Aspiration debit card. Open your account at aspiration.com slash more news debit today. Again, aspiration.com slash more news debit. Terms and conditions apply. Fun ad. That felt good. Praise the dark Lord. We are back. So as we just discussed, most mass or spree shooters typically aren't mentally ill

or delusional. They've more likely been radicalized. There are always exceptions like the deadly 1966 University of Texas tower shooting. In his suicide note, the shooter asked for an autopsy examining his brain because he believed it would reveal a visible physical disorder. And indeed, an autopsy revealed a malignant brain tumor. But even then, neurologists and medical scientists

can't agree on whether the tumor actually caused his actions. Perhaps it was a combination of the tumor and the shooter growing up learning to perpetrate domestic violence against women from his abusive father. But the point is that most of the time, this fallback on mental illness is a scapegoat tactic. And of course, blaming the mentally ill is actually one of our most popular American pastimes.

Not just for talking about mass shooters, there's been a long history of using mental illness as a catch-all phrase to mean anyone who does anything that we as a society don't like. Sometimes aimed at perfectly good people and sometimes aimed at terrible people. Hysteria has been a mental condition assigned to women for over 4,000 years,

based in either a belief in demons or pseudoscience. It has been used to describe women who refuse to obey social rules. Today, we're getting the same hogwash with LGBTQ people, most often with trans folk, of course. Obviously, I'm not saying that women or trans people wanting autonomy over their bodies are in any way comparable to mass murderers,

but the reason mental illness is used as a scapegoat, both for objectively good, but socially novel concepts, such as women's rights and trans rights, and for objectively heinous acts like murder, is that in both cases, it prevents people from having to examine society. Because examining society is like, it's wicked hard. Society is everywhere.

I mean, where would you even start? Here? Over there? That little bit? I don't know. And of course, using mental illness as a generic scapegoat is not only harmful to society at large, it's also obviously pretty bad for people who actually have mental health disorders.

The stigma of mental health has a long history, from demonology to very literal witch hunts. Today, we may not be burning people at the stake for having a mental health issue, but it's still stigmatized in a way that few other health issues are. You can't visually see a mental health issue like you might see a compound leg fracture,

someone with their dick stuck in a Roomba. And since it's not tangible and something literally happening in your head, mental health issues are often treated as less serious than a physical problem. Even though it's absolutely real, people can't see it and so can easily deny it, much like a man's very real love for a vacuum. And the brain's complexity, along with the complexity

of mental illness, makes the issue of mental health nuanced. Anyone has time for that? Yeah, over there, that person, I don't know. The brain is an organ, but when you have a mental health issue, it's not necessarily as simple as say a tumor or a lesion. The brain is extremely reactive to the environment, constantly changing and evolving,

something some scientists call learning. What the brain becomes as you grow up is a complex combination of physiological, environmental, socialization, it's even diet. And so it's incredibly hard to figure out what is happening in the brain that causes a certain behavior. I mean, the fact that we are even conscious

is completely fucking ridiculous. The brain is a slab of meat with electricity in it. And somehow that makes us alive and aware. Like I'm talking to you right now from inside my brain, but not really inside my brain because I am my brain, but not really because like, there's not like little Cody inside my brain controlling my brain because then that would require

another little brain too. So I'm just the collective activity of an electrified glob of protein. And like, what does that make me? Where even is me? It's absurd. Existence is absurd. Oh God.

Where am I? I want my Roomba. I want Betty. Hi, hi, hello, I'm okay. I'm meat and I'm okay. So the brain is very complex. It's us, but it's also an organ. It makes up our whole personality and consciousness,

but we don't have complete control over the functioning of all of our neurons. And so it's hard for people to wrap their heads around the concept of mental health. Even our language can be somewhat inadequate when talking about things regarding the mind. Like how I just said wrap your head around. What does that even mean?

Like our brains are some kind of Pac-Man that absorbs information by eating it? You learn things with a mind hug. My head's already wrapped around my brain, which is doing the thinking, so I... So when it comes to a mental health disorder, it's so tied up in the concept of self and personality that there's the false belief that a mental illness

is the fault of the person with the illness, or that they have control over it in a way that is not assumed of a lot of other kinds of health issues. There's a whole pull yourself up by your brain straps mentality, like someone with depression can just snap out of it, go to the gym, or someone with anxiety can just stop worrying, or someone with OCD can just relax

and stop thinking about it, or someone with PTSD can just get over what happened in the past. We wouldn't tell someone with a broken leg to just pick yourself up and take responsibility for your walking or someone with a heart attack to just start pumping blood normal and stop trying to get attention. And while it's true that medication

is not the answer for everyone and the treatment for a mental health disorder is going to be multifaceted and vary from person to person. And exercise helps a lot of things because the body and mind are linked and all sorts of stuff. There's this insidious idea, particularly among the manosphere,

that people are too quick to pop a pill for every little problem. Kickboxer and expert on women being bad drivers, Andrew Tate once tweeted, "'Depression isn't real. You feel sad, you move on.'" This modern philosopher has also had such great hits as, "'The reason 18 and 19 year olds are more attractive

"'than 25 year olds is cause they've been through less dick.'" You might think that we're cherry picking some random weirdo online, but unfortunately, this random weirdo has a huge following of impressionable young men. Although I can't find any of his accounts online anymore. That's weird, I wonder what that's about. This kind of toxic masculinity might be why men

are far less likely than women to seek treatment for their mental illness, because it's seen as weak or unmanly to have a brain and emotions, I guess, and take care of that brain when you need to. Which as an aside, may also be the reason behind the whole phenomenon of cops collapsing and feeling like they're dying if they're in the same two mile radius as fentanyl.

It's dramatic body cam video of a deputy sheriff collapsing to the ground. He and his partner were making a drug arrest when he suddenly has trouble breathing. But now the video is being met with skepticism by some medical experts who say it is impossible to overdose on fentanyl simply through airborne exposure. I can tell you with essentially 100% surety that this was not fentanyl poisoning.

When people get fentanyl poisoned, they don't just collapse like that, and not moments after an exposure. He says the deputy's reaction was likely caused by stress, not the drug itself. It is basically impossible to overdose on fentanyl by briefly touching it. So the cops are either lying, which would gasp sounds, be a huge shock,

or as psychologists suspect, these are panic attacks brought on by their training that teaches them how deadly fentanyl is. But these are tough manly cops, so they couldn't possibly have some kind of mental health issue. It must be that fentanyl can curse you if you so much as look at it.

Is fentanyl a Medusa? By the way, not really the focus of this video, but the misinformation and fear of fentanyl exposure could get people killed. Because if first responders become too afraid to touch someone going through fentanyl exposure could get people killed. Because if first responders become too afraid to touch someone going through fentanyl overdose, they may hesitate or fail to render aid to someone who is dying.

So denying that a cop could have a panic attack has very serious and potentially lethal consequences. But hey, if you're still not convinced to ignore your mental health, there are uncertified life coaches who promise that you can easily get over your fake mental illness if you sign up and pay for their courses. I'll go a step further and say,

if you have a giant flesh wound and are bleeding out, all you need to do is sign up for Cody's Courses, where I teach you how to have mind over matter in the case of massive blood loss and shock. Cody's course, he's not liable for death, dismemberment, medical malpractice, or literally anything else. All payments accepted in advance.

Some of this buzz about mental health issues being made up is due to a recent paper published that examined the relationship between clinical depression and serotonin levels. Quote science expert, Matt Walsh, who thinks scientists made up the hole in the ozone, this antidepressant study is huge. Big Pharma has made billions prescribing wonder drugs to treat depression, but there was never any solid scientific evidence that the drugs would work.

Now we know that the whole thing was built on a myth, Big Pharma's greatest scam of all time. The paper he's referring to isn't really a study, but a scientific review of a number of studies and came to the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that low serotonin levels or low serotonin activity causes depression. The media headlines about the paper have been,

at times, a bit loosey-goosey with accurately portraying the research. There are some slight over-interpretations with headlines like, "'Little evidence that chemical imbalance "'causes depression,' UCL scientists find." Or The Hill reporting that, "'Depression is likely not caused by a chemical imbalance

"'in the brain,' study says." Here, chemical imbalance is a less precise way of saying neurotransmitter imbalance. But the paper in question, which is a review of existing studies, not a new study, only claims that low serotonin levels have been ruled out, whereas there are actually a number of other neurotransmitters that the review does not examine.

Yet this nuance did not stop Matt Walsh claiming that antidepressants are a scam, even though the paper doesn't offer any conclusions on the efficacy of antidepressants. And though he claims that there was never any solid scientific evidence that the drugs would work, there is evidence that SSRIs and other antidepressants are significantly more effective than placebos in treating symptoms of depression. Also, this paper isn't a bombshell at all. According to Dr. Michael Bloomfield,

a psychiatrist and head of clinical research for UK Research and Innovation, the findings from this umbrella review are really unsurprising. Depression has lots of different symptoms, and I don't think I've met any serious scientists or psychiatrists who think that all causes of depression are caused by a simple chemical imbalance in serotonin. What remains possible is that for some people with certain types of depression, that changes in the serotonin system may be contributing to their symptoms. The problem with this review is that it isn't able

to answer that question because it has lumped together depression as if it is a single disorder, which from a biological perspective does not make any sense. Many of us know that taking paracetamol can be helpful for headaches, and I don't think anyone believes that headaches are caused by not enough paracetamol in the brain. I don't know how valid Dr. Bloomfield's point is

in criticizing the paper. Since I'm only an amateur brain doctor and not a professional one, sign up for Cody's Courses to get free brains. The point is that this is way more complicated than saying antidepressants are a myth based on a single paper that has critiques of its own. Psychiatry is complex because the brain is complex, as I feel like I've been saying this whole time. And so it sure as shit doesn't boil

down to Tom Cruise was right as some people want it to. In fact, as a general rule, I wouldn't go around saying Tom Cruise is right about anything except his ability to do wicked, ungodly stunts, for he is a mere vessel of Xenu and therefore fallible. Praise Xenu and the Dark Lord from before. They're both aces. So why are people so eager to find a way to debunk all of psychiatry

rather than make well-informed critiques? What is with the idea that a mental health problem is some kind of personal failing? Let's talk about that. But first, a wee spot of the old ads, I do say, dear old chap Cherubi. Oh, jeez, oh, jeez. Some nights it sure is tough to get to sleep. What with that neighbor kid and his tinkering in the garage. All night long he tinkers.

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That's N-E-X-T-E-V-O, dot com, promo code, more news. You're welcome, NextEvo. That's one extra ad read. Hey, we're back. Praise the Dark Lord. Praise Xenu. Also Xena. She's rad.

Not Hercules, though. That guy sucks. So we were asking why some people are so quick to hand wave psychiatry as a grift, and by extension categorize mental illness as something you can just get over. Well, remember when we talked about how mental illness has been used as a scapegoat for weird or bad people

for thousands of years? Well, to do that, it requires a pretty binary view of mental health. Like it's a certain type of wrong person who is mentally ill. But if mental health is a medical issue caused by many factors that could affect anyone, good people, bad people, old people, young people,

strong people, Crispin Glover, any gender, any age, well then it's harder to use mental illness as a metric of perceived moral failing. So anyone can have a mental illness and that itself does not make people dangerous or immoral. If anything, having a mental illness can increase a person's chance of becoming a victim of a crime. A study in Denmark showed

that the risk of being a victim of a crime rose by 50% and 64% respectively for men and women diagnosed with a mental illness. And for violent crime, that risk increased by 76% and 300% respectively for men and women. Now, obviously there are some, albeit a minority of people, with mental illness who are violent. And could their mental illness

impact their violent behavior? Potentially, it's always difficult to establish causation when there are so many other factors at hand. For instance, mental illness can make it difficult to get a job, and being jobless can exacerbate mental illness, a fun little vicious cycle. And if you struggle to have a stable job, maybe you're more likely to turn

to illegal ways to make money. Many mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, can also result in alienation from others, and alienation can cause violent ideation. Or maybe you have a mental illness and are also an asshole. Because again, mental illness affects anyone, including assholes. It's not a moral failing. But to accept that also means that you need to question whether or not the country is doing enough to help people with mental illnesses. And I think for some people, it's just easier to scapegoat both mental illness

and psychiatry. To other this group as being different than good God-fearing Americans, and only complaining about the issue when there's a mass shooting. During a news conference Wednesday, when Governor Greg Abbott was asked about passing gun laws, he focused on mental health. Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it. Okay, well then fund mental health care or I guess just complain about it and then don't. Fun fact, literally the day after we shot this episode,

Republicans voted against a bill to increase access to school-based mental health services. But I thought, but they said, and yet, hmm. Or is it that when Governor Greg Abbott says, "'We as a government need to find a way "'to target that mental health challenge "'and to do something about it,' he's not actually talking about helping people

with mental illnesses. After all, his state has the highest uninsured rate in the country. So maybe when he says, "'We as a government need to target "'that mental health challenge,' it just means he wants to like jail more mentally ill people or further stigmatize them in some way.

It's hard to see another option when looking at his actions, rhetoric, and context. Of course, that's pretty par for the course in America with a long list of horrible practices, such as eugenics, lobotomies, forced incarceration, and painful treatments. It's not as if we started off on the right foot when it came to treating mental health issues.

But in the late 1940s, popular culture started to recognize the abuse of mental health patients, with movies such as 1948's The Snake Pit showing poor conditions in mental asylums. Additionally, the return of soldiers from World War II with PTSD forced paradigm shifts in how institutions regarded mental illness.

By the 1950s, the National Institute of Mental Health wanted to shift from institutionalization to a community care approach with regards to mental health. Unfortunately, state governments were less than willing to fund such community care. In 1980, there was an attempt by President Jimmy Carter to create a federal and state network of mental health care. He passed the Mental Health Systems Act, which would have provided grants to community mental health care systems,

which included general health care, social support services, and mental health care services combined. The MHSA also focused on providing mental health care services for those in underserved communities and those with chronic mental health issues. Could this legislation have improved

the state of mental health care? Maybe even general health care in this country? Maybe. Who knows? Because when Reagan was elected to office, he immediately scrapped the act, reduced federal support for states' mental health care systems, and left the states to decide how to use the funds.

Yeah, you knew Ronnie Reagan was gonna show up in this, didn't you? He's our Thanos baby, the alpha and omega, big fans here at the showdy. Everyone wants to fuck Reagan and his purple dick. Reagan, of course, before he became president and wrecked up the whole place, was behind the deinstitutionalization of California.

Mental health institutions have a checkered past when it comes to treatment of patients, but Reagan's solution was to cut funding and staffing dramatically. In 1967, he signed the Lanterman-Petras Short Act, which on the surface seemed good. It ended the practice of involuntarily committing people to institutions, but it also effectively ended

the long-term housing of mental health patients, even when it was not coercive. But it wasn't just Reagan. This was the era of deinstitutionalization. As people realized more and more that these hospitals weren't helping, states began to pass individual laws to close them. In 1975, patients at the Northampton State Hospital

filed the first ever class action lawsuit to quote, "'Claim that residents of a state hospital "'had a constitutional right to receive mental health "'services in the least restrictive environment.' "'These laws designed to give patients rights "'and depopulate these horrendous institutions "'were on paper good. After all, that lawsuit was sparked

by abuses and poor conditions. But thanks to that lack of federal support, you can already guess the problem that followed. Tonight on Frontline. Where's your medication, Eddie? When he's off of medication, we don't wanna trust him. He's on the brink now of being where I'm going to try to get him admitted back to the hospital. What's the knife there for?

Don't, don't, don't touch it. As mental hospitals around the country are closing, what's to be done with the truly dangerous patients? I can't go on the street right now. I'm not safe enough to go on the street. I'll kill somebody. I will. Tonight on Frontline, a place for madness. That's from a tremendously stigmatizing 1994 episode of Frontline about the town of Northampton

and how when the state hospital closed, the patient simply filed out into the streets. They were lucky enough to have a single motel transform into a rehabilitation house out of the kindness of the owner's heart. Really seems like the fallback plan shouldn't have been hoping someone takes care of it, but of course this was soon happening everywhere in the country. Since there was no alternative community support

for people outside of the institutions, patients were simply left on their own or worse. I mean, just look at how frontline framed these people. And so after Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petras Short Act, there was a study in San Mateo showing the number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system doubling. So yes, while those mental institutions were very, very bad by effectively defunding and shuttering them

with nothing else in place, all while demonizing people with mental illnesses, prisons replaced institutions. There's actually an over-representation of people with mental illnesses in prisons and jails. 20% of people in jail and 15% of people in state prisons have a severe psychiatric disorder, according to an estimation based on data from the DOJ.

But the closure of mental health institutions only explains about 7% of the growth of prison populations. So why this over-representation? Well, it seems that the increase in people with mental illness in prisons aligns with the war on drugs. The war on drugs began in 1971 with President Nixon and was given fuel by Reagan at the same time

he was gutting mental health care. From 1972 to 2009, the prison population increased by 700%. Weird coinkydinky is that when there is a lack of access to mental health care, people with mental illness are more likely to self-medicate with illicit drugs. You know, the drugs that then make them targets for arrest under the drug war. So coincidental.

Wait, is the drug war bad? But if you think our ghoulish dedication to abandoning people with mental health needs has at least saved us money at the cost of our humanity, guess again. In 1986, the US spent around $32 billion on mental health services total across all payers, including out of pocket, private insurance costs

and federal spending. This spending steadily increased year over year. And in 2020, it rose to $238 billion. Adjusting for inflation, we're still spending three times what we spent in 1986 on mental health care. And yet less than half of Americans with mental health needs get the treatment they need,

and even less so for minority communities. This may be due to the patchwork system we have for mental health care, thanks to Reagan's successful dismantling of the Mental Health Systems Act. And while the federal government often funds state mental health care systems, like the grants provided in Biden's American Rescue Plan,

these funds come with an expiration date. The states have to spend all the money by 2026, and at that point, find other sources of funding for their mental health care programs, which gives us four years to fix mental health care in America after hundreds of years of screwing it up. Yay! Again, it's French.

I'm very distressed by this. Another problem with our patchwork state-by-state system is the distribution of mental health care professionals. There's a shortage of mental health care workers, which has become especially acute since the pandemic. Since, I don't know, I guess a global pandemic is kind of rough on people's mental health. That's weird. I had a global pandemic is kind of rough on people's mental health. That's weird.

I had a great time. It was awesome. But a 2020 survey of psychologists found that 74% of practitioners had an increase in patients with anxiety after the pandemic, which is over apparently. But not only is there a shortage of mental health care workers, there's an uneven distribution

where non-metropolitan areas often suffer a more severe lack of practitioners. It's funny, not in a ha-ha way, that leaving things up to the states often means just ignoring a bunch of people's needs and stranding them without important services. This is a little ha-ha funny if you're on nitrous or something,

but that could be said about anything, honestly. But maybe it's just impossible to have good mental health care. After all, the USA is the best country in the world, mostly because of KFC's double down dog. So if here we have one in six adults unable to afford professional mental health care when they're in distress,

it must be even worse for any other country that didn't have the freedom and skills to create a hot dog encased in fried chicken with a light jizzing of cheese. Well, other countries had their own deinstitutionalization movements, but instead of deciding to abandon severely mentally ill people, they actually put other community care resources in place. In 1978, Italy's parliament passed the Basali Law, named after Franco, Basali, which sought to replace segregated and coercive mental hospitals with community care.

Perhaps the most successful example of this was in the Italian city of Trieste, which replaced them with 24 hour community centers, at home care, housing, social clubs, work co-ops, and community recreation. Basically making the community more open and socially accepting to people with mental illnesses, while also improving conditions for the community at large.

There are indicators that Italy's model is working. The suicide rate in Italy dropped by over 13% between 2000 and 2011, which is greater than the average OECD country drop of 7%. And unfortunately in the US, the suicide rate increased in this time period by over 18%. The rate of depression in the US is two and a half times greater than that of Italy. Of course, Italy's model isn't perfect

because there is still a disparity in mental healthcare depending on the region. But even with its flaws, it is evidence that better mental healthcare is possible. And you don't have to go back to a coercive mental hospital model to achieve this. And even though Italy doesn't have the KFC double down, Italian McDonald's does let you get a hunk of parmigiano,

reggiano cheese instead of fries, which we are not making up. Glad that's making the news. We love the news. There's something else that can be learned from Italy. No, not the fascism stuff. Something non-cheese related as well. Although there is a lot of cheese stuff we have yet to learn. And that's the idea of mental health being a community issue

rather than an isolated individual problem to be segregated and tucked away from the rest of society. And not just in cases of severe mental health issues, but all mental health issues. In the US, we treat mental health as an issue of personal responsibility. Treating mental health means treating the individual with therapy and medication.

And of course, therapy and medication can be incredibly important, if not life-saving. But by focusing only on treatment of individuals, we fail to look at society as a whole and how it affects mental health. For instance, we could look at it the same way we look at treating cancer. Of course, it's important to treat people with cancer

with individualized therapies. But if something in the environment is increasing rates of cancer like air pollution, it's also critical that we address the larger societal level problem to prevent people from having health issues in the first place. Remember when I talked about Andrew Tate

and the other depression isn't real grifters? Well, the reason their ideas gain hold rather than being rejected outright as total shit is that there's a tiny kernel of truth, like a tiny, tiny piece of corn stuck amidst the shit. It's not that depression isn't real or that you can bootstraps your way out of depression, but that your situation can have a major impact

on your mental health. While it's true the mental health disorders are not 100% attributable to the environment, the environment will have a drastic effect on how that disorder manifests and how much suffering it causes. For example, the pandemic may not have caused OCD, depression and anxiety disorders in everyone,

but it certainly exacerbated the symptoms of people with these disorders. And culture also has a huge impact on the manifestation of neurodivergence and mental illness. The presentation of PTSD differs based on culture and can be greatly impacted by folklore, tradition and community gatherings. Schizophrenia presents very differently based on culture

and the rates of auditory or visual hallucination will differ based on one's country of origin. And of course, men tend to have a higher suicide rate and are less likely to seek therapy. It's theorized that this is because men are more commonly expected to suck it up and handle their problems in manly ways, like wars or whatever.

That's an environmental and cultural flaw. One that is often exploited by the aforementioned Andrew Tate and other manly grifters offering bad advice to depressed young men. I would show a clip of Tate doing this, but again, it's so weird, his YouTube page appears to be down. Wonder what that's about. It's not just mental health disorders

that will differ based on culture. Neurodivergent will be interpreted differently as well, like how being on the autism spectrum will be regarded through the lens of one's culture and impacts the level of stigma encountered by neurodivergent people. And this leads to an important question. If mental illness is defined by suffering,

how many people with mental illness may be neurodivergent and their suffering comes not from an intrinsic aspect of their brain, but how society treats them. After all, the American Psychological Association used to define homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973, which is when we started to realize that maybe tormenting gay people was the problem, not the gay people themselves.

So what are some of the cultural and environmental factors that may be affecting mental health? Well, most recently we saw how the pandemic increased rates of anxiety and depression worldwide by 25%, likely due at least in large part to social isolation and separation from the community. But what about other social factors over longer periods of time?

It's harder to study whether rates of mental health disorders have increased because diagnosis, detection, and recognition of mental illness has changed and improved over the years. There is some research that does indicate that symptoms of mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, have been on the rise in the US since the 1980s.

When surveyed on symptoms such as trouble sleeping or concentrating, respondents in the 1980s reported fewer symptoms than the same age groups in the 2010s. That study that compared the rates of depression in the US to Italy pointed out a number of cultural differences may be factors in the difference, such as increased work-related stress in the United States,

less time to relax, lower quality of affordable food, less time to have meals and greater rates of loneliness. An example of a seemingly small but possibly significant cultural difference is that in Italy, instead of eating lunch at work, businesses shut down for two hours and people often go home or go out to eat

with family and friends. Would longer lunches and lunch times and more vacations solve mental health problems? Probably not, but it might improve things and also just like make life better, which is another thing I think is important to point out. By integrating mental health care into the community, you can improve things both for people

with mental health needs and like everybody, which seems cool and nice. Not only is it good to improve the community for everyone, but it would be nice to change our views on mental health from being something only mentally ill people need to worry about to something everyone should take care of, just like you'd take care of your body. Our brains and our minds are like

one of the most important parts of us. It's weird, we almost seem to care more about access to haircuts than access to mental health care for everybody. Don't get me wrong, haircuts are super important too. So I'm told. But what I'm saying is that the general public often enjoys the benefits of more accessible communities.

It's easy to see this with physical disabilities, like how wheelchair ramps can make it easier for everyone who needs to use some kind of wheel, whether it's a wheelchair, stroller, suitcase, or a unicycled clown. Closed captioning not only helps deaf and hard of hearing people, but they can also be useful for understanding Tom Hardy,

increasing access to foreign language media, and just generally increasing the creativity of media, such as the wet footsteps squelch caption found in Stranger Things, a modern literary masterpiece. Accessibility is not a zero sum game. It actually enriches our society for everyone, one wet squelching step at a time. The same principle applies to mental health care. Substance abuse disorders, for everyone, one wet squelching step at a time. The same principle applies to mental health care.

Substance abuse disorders, for example, have resounding impacts on entire communities. Community-based treatment and evidence-based interventions that are integrated into general healthcare systems, not only have been found to reduce healthcare costs by $58 on every dollar spent, but can reduce incarceration, criminal justice expenses, and related community problems such as alcohol abuse.

Improvements to community welfare can have a broad impact on people with a number of life circumstances. Providing housing for people who are homeless improves outcomes for people with mental illness, but also is a generally good thing to do for the unhoused and helps the entire community. And for those who say, well, how do we pay for it? Well, first of all,

if we can afford to spend $62 million per year, not to build, but just for the US Air Force to operate and maintain a single B-2 Spirit Bomber, I think we have enough cash for some housing. But secondly, providing housing would actually reduce healthcare costs because it turns out that having a roof over your head, it's good for your health.

Better check the math on that one. As we look at evidence-based solutions to improving mental healthcare, it actually turns out that we'd be improving quality of life for a whole lot of other people as well. Might I be so bold as to say possibly everyone, but we need to get over the mentality that suffering is somehow necessary in society.

The providing resources and changing our society to help out people suffering from mental illness would somehow be a burden on the rest of us. And that people need to go through hardships on their own to build character. It's a very odd and strange coincidence indeed, then that the bootstraps people who like to cut funding for mental healthcare services also love to use mental

illness as a scapegoat for mass shootings. It's the same mentality as Reagan dismantling federal spending to counteract the closing of institutions. If you recognize that mental illness is a problem, but don't want to do anything to help people with those illnesses, then what are you actually proposing? The answer to that, when you think about it, is horrifying. And so I guess the question here is,

what kind of country do we want to be? One that ostracizes anyone whose brain works a bit differently and throws them in prison or underfunded coercive institutions, or a country that aims to actually help people in need, and by extension, everyone. And for the love of God, can we not get some fucking cheese blocks

mixed into our fast food? What are we even doing? Also, legalize having sex with vacuums. It's 2022 for God's sake. Oh, okay. I'm being told that's actually not illegal, but rather just a strange and dangerous thing to do. That's fair.

All right, well, I'm gonna go eat some cheese and do some other stuff as well. Oh no, the floor is getting dirty. Betty, the floor. That was a bit. I don't fuck the Roomba. I don't even have a Roomba. I don't even fuck. That's not true.

Anyway, thanks for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe. On the channel, we got merch at a merch store with the Worm Boat face on it. We got a patreon.com slash some more news. We got a podcast called Even More News and this as a podcast. I'll see you news. We got a podcast called Even More News and this as a podcast. I'll see you later.

Gonna go fuck the Roomba. I mean, I'm gonna go vacuum my dick. Wait. Ah.