The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 64 - We're All Mentally Disordered

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

The drug companies and the psychiatric industry have turned nearly every human emotion, trait, characteristic, and weakness into symptoms of mental diseases. Often they do so by pushing thoroughly debunked theories like "chemical imbalancement." Before long, we will all be mentally disordered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So I wrote an article a few weeks ago titled, We Have Turned Childhood into a Mental Disorder. And I've been wanting to do a show on the topic, and I thought now as good a time as any, especially because the main reason I wanted to visit this topic again is because the mistake I made when I wrote that article is that I think I was being too limited in my scope. The truth is that we've not only turned childhood into a mental disorder,

we have in fact turned the human condition into a mental disorder. We have turned humanity. Just the very state of being a human being has now turned into a mental disorder. I would argue. There are about 300 mental disorders listed in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, the DSM, kind of the Bible of mental disorders. And according to a report published on the National Institute of Health website in 2005, half of the population, half of the population will qualify for mental illness at some point in their

lives, their lives by the standards of the DSM. Okay, half of the population. Now, here's an interesting logical question. How can you even call it a disorder if half of the population has it? It would be like if half of the population had three arms, let's say. It would be very hard. It would be very hard. to determine that having three arms is a disorder or a mutation because it's kind of like, well, you get one half with that and the other. How do you know which half is the disordered one, I guess is the question? The psychiatric industry, though, has basically set out to catalog and medicalize every human behavior, emotion, inclination, temptation, and personality trait. and it would seem that we're reaching a point where nobody in America can be considered normal.

And you really have to wonder, actually, where do the drug companies and the psychiatrist, where do they get their idea for what is normal? Because they're talking all the time about, well, that's abnormal, that's disordered. Okay, well, what is normal to you? What do you consider normal? What is normal behavior? What is a normal person? What are normal feelings and normal thoughts?

What is a normal brain? Because it seems like you, being the drug companies, psychiatrists, doctors, you very rarely come across anything you consider normal. Everyone that comes to you apparently is abnormal. So where are the normal people, is the question. And, you know, as we look at this mysterious rise in mental illnesses across America, you know, we're always told about the mental health epidemic. And we look at the fact that mental illnesses used to be incredibly rare, and now it is

utterly commonplace. And we look at the fact that drug companies have so far gotten almost 20% of the population of America onto psychiatric drugs. And when you look at all those factors, I think you really have to start to wonder about the chicken or the egg. because we could say that, well, yeah, all these people mysteriously are coming up with mental disorders, and so that's why they're all on these drugs. But many of these drugs cause suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression.

Meanwhile, a lot of Americans are having suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression. So could there be a link there? I mean, is that worth at least considering? here's the reality. Before you had millions of Americans being put on these psychiatric drugs, you did not have an epidemic of suicide, depression, anxiety. Now you do. And it just so happens that these drugs they're putting everybody on cause those things. Again, it's enough to make you pause and just think for a minute, isn't it? Yet we don't pause. We don't even think about this. It seems like most people would just go along with it.

Now, I focus very often on children when it comes to this issue because I think nowhere is the tendency to medicalize the human condition more apparent or more dangerous than with children. I mean, we're putting kids on these drugs and they're staying on them for their entire lives. As most people know, there's been an astronomical rise in ADHD diagnoses over. over the last several years.

And now somewhere around 10% of all children in the country have been labeled with this alleged disorder and the label is being stuck on kids at earlier and earlier ages. And we're now told that kids as young as three years old, three years old can be diagnosed with ADHD. There are new medical guidelines recommend that psychiatric drugs for kids

can start at four years old. if their, quote, symptoms are, quote, debilitating. And a third of all kids with ADHD are diagnosed before the age of six. And again, when they put you on these drugs, there's a very good chance you're going to be on them forever. You're never getting off of them. It also just so happens that there's a very high likelihood that somebody who is diagnosed officially with ADHD as a child will develop. later on other mental disorders. And it just so happens that these drugs they're putting the kids on can cause those other problems down the line. Again, is there possibly a connection?

When you have someone who's easily distracted at the age of four and you put them on drugs, and then at the age of 16 or 18, now they have debilitating depression, is it possible that the drugs you've been in the chemicals that you've been sending into their brain, the drugs that you've had them on for the last 10 years could have something to do with that. Is it possible? Of course, doctors will assure parents that the drugs are safe and will cause no long-term damage to their children. But at best, at best, we don't know whether or not that's actually true. So that is, when doctors are sad,

that they're lying. They cannot just, they will declare it, but they can't do it honestly. Oh yeah, they won't cause any problems down the line. What? There's plenty of reason to believe that these drugs are altering your child's brain in ways that they will feel for years to come possibly their entire lives. And on what basis? Now, I don't want to focus this whole time on ADHD, and I've done, you know, I've written and done shows on ADHD before, but I think we can't overlook ADHD because that's a big part of this whole problem. And I think it's a catalyst for a lot of the other problems down the line. So we should ask, on what basis do we take this incredible step as a society to drug into

oblivion what used to be considered completely common and normal and even charming, childhood characteristics. After all, any experienced parent can look at a list of ADHD symptoms and see that they are the most normal characteristics in the world. So here are a few symptoms of ADHD. In constant motion, squirms and fidgets makes careless mistakes,

often loses things, does not seem to listen, easily distract. does not finish tasks. Now, honestly, I would be more concerned about a child who doesn't display those symptoms than I would be about a child who does. So how on earth can we take these normal childhood behaviors and decide that in certain cases, they could be a manifestation of a mental illness? How do we do that? Well, The National Institute of Mental Health offers a clue about this, and this is what the National Institute of Mental Health said. People who have ADHD have combinations of these symptoms.

Now listen to the symptoms. Overlook or misdetails make careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities, fail to follow through on instructions, fail to finish schoolwork, chores or duties in the workplace, avoid or dislike tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as schoolwork or homework, lose things necessary for tasks or activities such as school supplies, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, and cell phones. The Mayo Clinic puts it this way. In general, a child shouldn't receive a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder unless the core symptoms of ADHD start early in life. before age 12, and create significant problems at home and at school on an ongoing basis.

You notice the word that kept popping up there. School, school, school, school. According to the medical community, a child's personality becomes diseased at the precise moment that his personality interferes with his schooling. Now, that's very odd, isn't it? Because physical diseases aren't judged that way. As I've said in the past, if you go to the doctor because you think you have diabetes, he's going to run any number of tests on you. But I guarantee you this, here's what he won't ask. He won't ask you, well, is the diabetes causing problems at home or at school? No, he's not going to ask that because it doesn't matter. If it's a, if it is, if you have an objective case of diabetes, it makes no difference whether or not it's causing problems for

you in this or that environment. It's the disease exists one either way. Diabetes is diabetes at school. Diabetes is diabetes at home. Diabetes is diabetes when you're alone in the forest. It doesn't matter what you could be you could be on a desert island all by yourself and you would still have diabetes. But ADHD is entirely different because if you're on a desert island by yourself, you don't have ADHD because it's not getting in the way of anything. If you're alone in the forest, you don't have ADHD because it's not getting in the way of anything. the way of anything. But the moment that it becomes a nuisance, the moment that it gets in the way of something that you're doing, especially school, now it becomes a disorder. So the disorder is

subjective, environmental, contextual. But how can that be a disorder of the person? Is it not possible that our perception is just wrong? Is it not possible further, possibly, that the environment itself is disordered. If a school cannot function without putting hundreds of its students on psychiatric medication, then should we not consider the possibility that the school environment is the disordered thing and not the kids? Should we not consider that maybe there is something about the way that we approach modern schooling that makes it so difficult or impossible for for children with certain personalities to succeed. And if that's the case, then should we be changing the kids

or should we be changing the school? Now, this diagnostic criteria is rather peculiar, especially because advocates for ADHD drugs will claim that the disorder can be located in the brain. And we hear this about many mental illnesses where we're told that, oh, you know, you do your research. You don't know anything about the science. It's in the brain. It is in the brain.

You can see it in the brain. Well, then answer me this. If ADHD can be located in the brain, why is it diagnosed with a personality survey? They say the same thing for depression, every other mental illness. Yet why don't they diagnose these mental illnesses with brain scans? Why is that? If you're telling me that, oh, it's clearly in the brain, well, then why aren't we looking at the brain

before we tell somebody that they have this disorder? And here's what you never hear of happening. Here's what never happens. At least I've never heard of this. And if you have, then correct me. But I have never heard of anyone being diagnosed with ADHD or depression or what have you. And then the diagnosis being changed or overturned when somebody looks at a brain scan.

I've never heard of that. Like, you hear about that with other diseases. You hear about somebody going to the doctor because they appear to have the symptoms of some physical disease. And then the doctor says, yeah, you might have it. They run some tests. And then they say, oh, no, you don't have it. So that happens all the time with other diseases. it never happens with these mental illnesses.

It's interesting, isn't it? Because if these things can be found in the brain, then there should be people who think they have it, but then find out they don't because it's not in the brain. But that never happens. So here's the way that we approach mental illnesses. We say, if there are neurological differences in your brain, then it proves that you have whatever mental illness.

But if there aren't any neurology, differences, you still have the mental illness. You see, the drug companies win either way. It's a rigged game, no matter what. If you have the brain differences, then you see, it proves it. If you don't have it, yeah, well, you still have it. How is that, how does, look, I admit to you, I'm not a scientist, all right, but how is that consistent with the scientific process? How is that medicine? What is scientific about that? It's like if a doctor called you up and said, said, well, the AIDS test came back negative. Oh, thank God. But you still have it. What? What do you mean? You just said the tests are negative. Now, it may be true, and I admit,

it may be true that you can find certain neurological similarities among certain people who have been diagnosed with ADHD or depression or any number of other mental illnesses. And, So maybe you could look at a, you could line up a bunch of, quote, ADHD brains and see certain things going on that are similar among, among many of the brains, all right? Okay, fine. Even if you could find that. You can also find neurological similarities among people with similar personalities and dispositions like enthusiasm and altruism.

If you were to take a bunch of people who are very inclined to be. enthusiastic, like my wife, for instance. She's a very enthusiastic person. And if you were to look at her brain and look at the brains of a bunch of other enthusiastic people, you'd probably find things going on that are similar. You'd find the same thing among optimists and among pessimists. You know, they say that there's a, for lack of a better term, there is an optimistic brain and a pessimistic brain. But that doesn't prove that these similarities, cause optimism or pessimism or enthusiasm or hyperactivity. You could also look at the brain scan of a man who is grieving his dead wife,

and you could find his grief reflected in his brain. You could also see his happiness if his child was just born. A moment after his child is born, if you were to do a brain scan, you could see that reflected in his brain. you could even see the kind of calm joy that he finds in prayer reflected in his brain. But that doesn't prove that the chemical reactions in his brain are causing the grief, the joy, the closeness with God that he feels. You see, just because you find it, and just because you find potentially some kind of a correlation,

that doesn't prove that the one causes the other. And of course, I'm being very generous by even accepting this idea of brain differences. After all, people are still told, to this day, that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. And drug companies still sell drugs based on that idea. Drug companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars, selling drugs that are supposed to treat a chemical embalancement.

Here's the thing. The drug companies know and the doctors know that this imbalancement does not exist. It has never been proven. It has never been found. It has never been demonstrated. It was a theory concocted by psychiatrists decades ago, and they've been trying for decades to prove it they never have.

which explains why study after study have shown that antidepressants don't perform significantly better than plasibos. And they especially don't perform better than active placibos. An active placebo that they would give you in a medical trial is a pill that doesn't do anything to treat whatever problem, but it does come with a certain side effect. So like maybe it's a placebo that will call it. cause dry mouth or something like that or give you a headache. And the reason why they give an active placebo is because then, you know, it can kind of trick your mind. Once you notice that you're having a side effect, well, then you're going to think that,

oh, this is a real drug, and then the placebo effect can catch on. So in other words, sometimes when they test a drug and then they have the placebo, those trials are not always reliable because it could be that the real drug is actually doing nothing, but it is causing some kind of physical side effect which tricks a person into thinking that the drug is doing something. So I think that could be why antidepressants historically perform not very well against placebo. Let me quote now a paper in the public library of science.

To our knowledge, there is not a single peer-reviewed article that can be accurately cited to directly support claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder, while there are many articles that present counter-evidence. Yet again, they are putting millions of people on these drugs to treat a chemical imbalance that, doesn't exist and that they know doesn't exist. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfume intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria.

Discover the Euphoria Elixir Collection by Calvin Klein. Now, and we just go along with it. Like, I mean, it's incredible that we all just sit back and go along with this. And doctors go along with it. Putting people on these drugs that are going to do all kinds of things to their brain, but are not going to treat the actual chemical imbalancement because it isn't there. Now, here I think is the problem with our whole approach to mental illnesses. and this, by the way, I'm not talking about brain diseases.

A brain disease like dementia, where you can see the brain literally atrophy. Now, that's very different from a mental illness. And if a mental illness were a brain disease, then we wouldn't call it a mental illness. In other words, if we could definitively see that this mental illness is caused by something going, wire in the brain. And we could see that there's a real disease in the brain. Then we would just call

it a brain disease. We wouldn't call it a mental illness. But we call the mental illnesses because they are, we say, diseases of the mind rather than diseases of the brain. But what is the mind? And how can you diagnose it? And how do you distinguish it from the brain? See, the thing is, in diagnosing the mind as distinct from the brain, a psychiatrist is now basically looking at the whole human person, looking at how somebody feels, how they live, how they think, and from that deciding, based on entirely subjective criteria, that a person ought not be like that.

Now, it's easy, usually this is an easy process for a doctor. a doctor can look at a liver or a kidney or even a brain and say no that's not supposed to do that and that's usually the medical process here is like there's a certain organ or a certain certain part of the body that is malfunctioning and so you can look at that and you can see what the brain does during dementia well it's not supposed to do that clearly and so there's a disease. But with mental illnesses, we look at somebody prone to distraction or somebody who's in despair or somebody who has anxiety. And doctors say, well, no, humans aren't supposed to have those mental experiences. Nope. Or if they do have them, they should have them only for X amount of time

and to Y degree. Yet we never step back and ask, says who? How can you? How can you? possibly determine that? How are you in authority on how people should think and act and feel? Who put you in that position? How is that even a medical determination? A child isn't supposed to be easily distracted. Who says? Okay, based on how, what do you mean? How did you determine that? That a child isn't supposed to be that way? No, it's very, okay, you could look at a child and say, he is easily distracted, fine. I know that you can do that. But when you get to the he shouldn't be part of it,

what does that mean? What do you mean supposed to be, shouldn't be? In order to, now to look at a person, it's like, well, they aren't supposed to feel like that or they aren't supposed to be like that. In order to make a claim like that, and that is an incredible claim to make. but in order to make that claim

you must have some idea of like the ideal person so if I'm looking at something and saying well it's not supposed to do that I must have an idea about what it's supposed to do so I can look at a computer

if I knew about computers which I don't but if I were an expert on computers and the computer was having a problem I could say no that computer is not supposed to do that and the reason why I can say that is because I know what a computer is supposed to do And I can prove it for it. I can take a normal computer and show you, oh, no, this is what a computer is supposed to do. Here's what your computer is doing. Here's the, there's a disconnect here, and so here's how we can fix it. But when you look at a person and you say, they aren't supposed to be and feel like that, well, then what you have to be able to do is you have to be able to take a, quote, normal person and say, oh, no, that, you see that person there? That's how you're supposed to be. How could you possibly determine that? this normal person? Where is this normal standard for a person by which we are all being judged?

Now, of course, if you take an entirely materialistic view of humanity, which most psychiatrists do, then you have to believe that everything a person feels, everything he thinks, all of his traits, his characteristics, his flaws, his sins, his desires, his goals, his love, his judgment. joy, his despair, and so on, are all just material phenomenon. But if, on the other hand, you factor in the soul and free will and the uniqueness of each person created by a divine force, then it's clear that there's something deeper, okay, there is something called a soul, and that is what drives and animates a person. He said, I think it's really kind of a philosophical question at the root of this whole, well, there are many philosophical questions.

We have allowed the medical community and the drug companies, they have, in my opinion, they have gone way beyond medical and science. They've gone way beyond medicine and science, and they have wandered into philosophy. And we are allowing them to tackle these really deep philosophical questions. Like when you say a person isn't supposed to be and feel like that, that is a philosophical judgment, not a scientific one. And there's another question too, and a philosophical question. What drives, what animates a person? If you say that we are nothing but flesh and bone, then I guess you would have to answer that what really drives and animates us is our brain chemistry. but if you're not a materialist,

then you would say that what drives and animates us, the animating force within us, is actually our soul or our mind. And again, it comes, you know, so for me, since I'm not a materialist, I would say that the soul and the mind are the same thing. Now, if you are a materialist, I don't even know what you mean when you say mind. What do you talk about? There's only the brain. There is no mind, per se.

So I'm not even sure what that means. But you say the word mental illness, but all you believe in is, but you only accept the existence of a brain. Well, I think there's a confusion there. You can't even define what a mind is, yet you're diagnosing it. I would say, and I think anyone who's not a materialist

would have to say that your mind is your soul. You know, one and the same. So the point is, even if a chemical imbalancement could be found, and it hasn't been. But even if it were, there would still be a question about whether that imbalancement is a reflection or a symptom of the spiritual problem rather than itself being the cause of the problem. And even if you don't factor in the human soul, I mean, that's just one of the issues here. Even if you don't factor that in. And even if you did prove this embalancement theory,

still, you wouldn't be able to prove that the imbalancement causes whatever disorder because you couldn't prove that the imbalancement isn't itself caused by, say, environmental factors or life experience or any number of other things. So, again, there are these enormous leaps of logic that are being made when we talk about mental illnesses, and we're just allowing the drug companies and doctors to make those leaps. and we're not even questioning them. But even if we were to put all this to the side, even if you were to accept just for a moment

that brain chemistry determines everything about a person, and even if we were to accept that there is this chemical imbalancement and the chemical imbalancement itself does cause, say, ADHD or depression or whatever, that still wouldn't prove that a particular personality, like the ADHD personality, for instance, is disordered. It doesn't prove, in other words, that a person shouldn't be that way. We've decided that kids aren't supposed to be that way. We've decreed it from on high like gods,

and then we've set out to chemically eliminate every human disposition that we find inconvenient or difficult, but that is subjective, it's arbitrary. It's not scientific. And again, we do the same thing with adults. We do it with all people. We look at unfavorable characteristics, emotions, and personalities, and we decide that because they are unfavorable,

they must therefore be medical. But I don't think that's how medicine works. So we may say, for instance, that somebody has an anxiety disorder. Okay, but who's to say that they shouldn't have anxiety? the anxiety is disordered okay well what do you mean what is the proper order for anxiety say it's a disorder of anxiety okay well what what how is anxiety supposed to work or are you saying that there shouldn't be any anxiety at all how do you determine that and who determined it and on what authority based on what science now i have a lot of anxiety i

it's unpleasant, I don't like it. And no, I don't think that a person should live consumed by anxiety. But neither do I think that anxiety is necessarily a medical condition. And I also think that it hasn't been proven to be a medical condition. It has rather been decided philosophically that it must be a medical condition. And that's a problem. I think it's possible, not just possible, but I think there are, you know, there are many problems that a person can have. Serious problems, difficult, painful problems. That doesn't mean that the problems are medical.

It doesn't mean that they're physical at all. There could be other things going wrong. things in your life, things in your soul. There's any number of other things that could be happening to cause problems for a person. But what we've done is we have eliminated all of those possibilities, and now everything has to just be medical and physical. I'm not saying that mental illnesses don't exist. I'm saying that there are many questions we aren't asking, and we should be. I'm also saying that when analyzing a person's emotional and mental issues, we can't completely

disregard things like free will, choice, environment, experience, and the soul. Yet that is exactly what we've done with mental illness. And we've done so on the word of drug companies and psychiatrists who themselves are still pushing debunked theories to explain the problems that they're supposed to be. be treating. That's what I'm saying. And that's all I'm saying. And maybe these are questions we should think about and try to answer before we continue along this path of turning everything and everyone into a mental disorder. Just a thought. Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.