In this episode, Dr. Roger McFillan is back with us to talk about ADHD and ADD, the harm of SSRIs, and the dangers of over-the-counter meds. Dr. Mcfillan has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years and is the author of Radically Genuine: The Real Story about Mental Health and Well-Being.
00:02:23.080So there's nothing that I have said that actually puts me at risk.
00:02:27.260And if you notice the last couple of times that I've been on this podcast, you can tell that I'm thinking a lot, right?
00:02:33.580It's how fear gets conditioned into a professional where you're afraid to say things that can put your job at risk.
00:02:43.180And I was doing a lot of reflection over that, especially the past year.
00:02:48.040Because, you know, I've got kids in college.
00:02:50.220My entire life has been dedicated to being a clinical psychologist.
00:02:56.940And you speak to, or I have spoken to what I've known about the scientific literature, but I don't always have, I haven't always spoken to what was in my heart, for example.
00:03:08.420And the truth of the matter is, is I believe I haven't done enough.
00:03:13.120And I kind of feel shameful about it, to be honest with you, that I have this brand called Radically Genuine and I have this podcast.
00:03:21.400But I don't think I've spoken out about the real harms of my industry.
00:03:27.160Not just the psychiatric industry, but the therapy industry, the mental health industry in general, and how I think it's been an experiment, a social experiment that has gone on, certainly for the past 30 or 40 years, that has created indelible harm.
00:03:44.060And if we continue to kind of view our human experience under the umbrella of that industry, you're going to see what we've actually been witnessing, which is declining mental health, worsening mental health.
00:04:00.140And in fact, we have generations right now who are actually in this adversarial relationship with their own emotional states.
00:04:06.980It's almost like the expectation is that we're supposed to feel good all the time.
00:04:12.040And if you don't, there's something wrong or defective.
00:04:27.260You know, it's worsening over the past five years dramatically.
00:04:31.260And so I step back and am I speaking enough about that?
00:04:34.980I mean, I'm talking about psychiatric drugs and the harms of psychiatric drugs.
00:04:38.280But I think those are pretty much well accepted.
00:04:42.320I mean, I'm not going to be put on the stand for malpractice talking about the fact that there's no identifiable chemical imbalance or that antidepressants cause harm.
00:04:53.740But am I talking about what the therapy industry is doing?
00:04:57.300What we've collectively created in our consciousness about what actually is mental health and well-being?
00:05:04.040And that's where I don't think I've spoken out enough.
00:05:07.100And I have to be willing to give up what I know.
00:05:12.000The safety and the security of my job.
00:05:15.240Like, I thought I knew what faith was.
00:05:34.360Like, have I really surrendered to what the truth is inside of me?
00:05:39.120Have I really been able to quiet my mind and be with Christ and speak the truth with my clients, on my podcast, with my family, with my friends, in the academic world that I have been trained?
00:05:51.640And I don't think I have, because when you go to school in the United States, in the secular world that we live in, when you go to graduate school, everyone worships at the altar of scientism.
00:06:21.000And that our mental health is very much connected to what our purpose is and connection to that.
00:06:28.360And you bring up those ideas in academia, and religion and faith are almost discussed as if they're fairy tales.
00:06:36.340And those fairy tales are of less evolved people who have a hard time dealing with death, coping with death.
00:06:46.740And so I'd like to have a greater conversation today on what mental health is, where we are in our culture, where my industry is harmful, and where we can go.
00:06:57.800I want to go back to what you said at the beginning about your statements being controversial.
00:07:02.980And I think, to me, it comes down to a matter of defining what it means to be controversial.
00:07:09.900So when I've said in the past that your statements are controversial, it's not that they're wrong or that they are scientifically ambiguous, but that they cause anger.
00:07:20.360They cause defensiveness, they cause controversy within the comments, maybe not even in the scientific community, but certainly when you say things like there's no such thing as a chemical imbalance in SSRIs, they're not getting to the root cause, they're not actually healing.
00:07:37.620Same thing with ADHD, that it's kind of like an umbrella term, which I think you're right, that the science supports what you have said.
00:07:45.640What I mean by controversial is not me trying to, you know, throw out clickbait or trying to get views.
00:07:52.440But I know, because I'm sure you do too, but I'm receiving the DMs and the comments from people who have never heard this before, who have been told they think from doctors, maybe it's just from pharmaceutical companies, that yes, it's a chemical imbalance.
00:08:10.620Yes, ADHD is one easy diagnosis that we can just fix with medication.
00:08:15.280So to them, your statements are extremely controversial because they've never heard that before and they feel very defensive about the choices they've made for themselves or their children.
00:08:25.260So I just wanted to clarify that, that in the past, I haven't tried to cast the conversations, you know, for a clickbait or just for views, but acknowledging that there are people out there who are going to feel that this is extremely controversial for you to make those statements.
00:09:38.480This had already happened and I didn't speak to this.
00:09:41.160So I got a case into my practice, you know, confirmed by hospital records, police reports.
00:09:49.340It was a woman who was sex trafficked, brutally tortured.
00:09:54.920And she was about an hour and a half away from me.
00:09:58.620So she was coming up to see me, to work with me.
00:10:01.760And I work with post-traumatic stress clients, sexual assault victims.
00:10:07.080You know, I've worked with servicemen who've, you know, been in combat.
00:10:12.580So well-versed in the therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:10:18.560And so I was expecting a woman who was traumatized.
00:10:27.000I was expecting a woman to be in a state of high distress and difficult to be able to trust me, especially as a male.
00:10:38.300So that idea in my mind of who she was before she even stepped into my practice was pretty solidified.
00:10:44.240And when she came in and I met with her, there was this overwhelming sense for me that I was in the presence of God.
00:10:55.000And my rational mind cannot even describe to you what that feeling was like.
00:11:03.600And it was a woman of such tremendous strength and wisdom that I was shocked, right?
00:11:11.460I still went very slowly with her, getting to know her, building trust, building rapport, under the understanding that, you know, she still does have significant trust issues.
00:11:24.900Although that wasn't presented in front of me.
00:11:26.980So I just spent a lot of time getting her story.
00:11:29.660And I was really looking forward to the sessions because I think I was benefiting it more than she was.
00:11:52.200And, you know, I asked her, I asked her how she got through that, which isn't a, which is certainly not a question that's out of the ordinary, but her answer was out of the ordinary.
00:12:14.620I mean, she looked at me dead in the eyes in a way that you could feel it.
00:12:20.800And she said, you know, God came to me while I was being tortured and while I was being raped and he turned everything around into love.
00:12:30.840I also had visions of who they were when they were children and what happened to them, which generated compassion.
00:12:46.280She eventually escaped, told that to police.
00:12:50.820She was sent to the hospital, which she should have been.
00:12:53.040She was examined since she was examined psychiatrically.
00:12:55.600And then she was placed on a series of antipsychotic drugs because she told the story about, you know, what happened with God visiting her.
00:13:07.300And, you know, she speaks to the horror of what happens when you're on multiple mood-altering and mind-altering drugs.
00:13:14.780And, you know, she was able to get off those drugs.
00:13:16.940But it was so important for me also to reflect on how our current culture would view such an event, how it's viewed from the lens of illness.
00:13:26.880And we have lost our ability to talk about collective suffering, to talk about the spiritual phenomenon, at least in the academic world, in the world that I exist in, to speak about how phenomenon such as that really can be divinely inspired and created.
00:13:50.320And when you're open, that God does visit us in that way.
00:13:54.100And that's not the first situation that I've had since then.
00:13:57.480You know, I've found that people are afraid to talk about those experiences.
00:14:02.800Even I'm afraid to talk about them because of how we're mass conditioned by fear.
00:14:08.380I honestly believe that me hearing that was an important message to actually share on this podcast today.
00:14:17.100So I ended up, I told you before we sat down, I've been having these nonstop dreams about what needs to be shared on this podcast.
00:14:26.780I get up very early in the morning and pray and get into a meditative state.
00:14:36.940So I reached out to her because we're under strict confidentiality laws and I could never share such a story in any way that it could violate her confidentiality.
00:14:47.820So I ended up contacting her a couple of weeks ago to ask for permission to tell that story.
00:14:54.360And, you know, she was absolutely thrilled because when I stopped working with her, this is what she shared with me.
00:15:00.360I said, I said, you don't need therapy.
00:15:02.800In fact, I'm benefiting from this experience.
00:15:05.400And she said that she knows and that she felt like she had to share the story with me for it to be a greater message.
00:15:15.960And I didn't necessarily understand fully what that meant.
00:15:19.640And so I think it has something to do with having to share it today.
00:15:25.000And these spiritual phenomenons, these experiences are very, very common.
00:15:29.860Like I've experienced them, not to the extent that this young lady has, I mean, I've lived a blessed life in comparison to her, but learning to be able to quiet our minds, to be fully connected to the spirit has transformed the work that I do in the last few years.
00:15:48.560Because I've had a challenging relationship with my own faith because I'm a Catholic and I was treating victims of clergy abuse.
00:15:58.160And so that was a real challenging period.
00:16:01.340And so these experiences that I've had with some of my clients and some of the messages have been, you know, very eye-opening and changed the way that I should talk about mental health.
00:16:11.460And I think we should all talk about mental health.
00:16:13.200Dr. John MacArthur, that's always been his criticism of psychology is that psychologists and psychology in general disregards the soul.
00:16:36.220And he's always argued, and I'm not saying that you would necessarily agree with this, but he's always argued that it is really only Christians who are equipped to deal with issues of mental health because only Christians understand the soul, the soul's creator, and what the soul fully and finally needs.
00:16:57.820And whether you agree with that line of reasoning or not, I think that we can agree that disregarding the soul means that you can't fully address someone's issues or problems or confusion or whatever, the chaos that's going on inside their mind.
00:17:13.320Because you're only thinking about it in context of the brain, in the context of chemicals and hormones and things like that.
00:17:22.800To me, that makes a lot of sense for why so many psychologists do just kind of put a Band-Aid on it and say, well, this is a chemical problem.
00:17:30.840If you don't believe that there's a spirit, if you don't believe that there's a soul, then we really are just like, you know, just neurons firing off, you know?
00:17:49.860I watched your interview with him, and then I investigated a little bit more of his work.
00:17:54.540And he actually refers to a number of the psychologists and psychiatrists that I've read as well, and it talks about the illegitimate authority of the psychiatric medical establishment.
00:18:07.900The idea that consciousness is somehow emitted from the brain is a categorical error in identification for one.
00:18:18.140So Matt Walsh actually got into an interesting discussion on this with some well-known psychiatrists, including some that I've had on my podcast.
00:18:27.600And his statement was that depression is a state of being that we have to connect with the soul.
00:18:44.760It's not something that there's something broken within your brain.
00:18:48.140It is a state of, you know, often of emptiness and spiritual disconnection, of loneliness, of fear, that we all have the propensity to enter in.
00:19:01.160And statistically speaking, we will likely go through those periods in our life.
00:19:06.840Here is what I disagree with my profession.
00:36:09.280And I can't help but be so saddened by this idea of what is trauma that is created in our culture that in so many ways devalues everyone's inherent resilience.
00:36:20.620And when I say that's not trauma, I'm the bad guy in these scenarios.
00:36:25.840Like I've had to sit down with some people or even some parents and say that it's harmful for you to create that version of her reality or his reality.
00:36:36.580And just think about the power of the mental health professional.
00:36:40.120The power of the mental health professional can create a reality for a person.
00:37:26.760I have so much to say about what you just said.
00:37:29.300And part of that last thing, I like to say that the self can't be both the problem and the solution.
00:37:34.460And so if you're fine, if your problem is in your mind, all of your thoughts are jumbled, they feel anxious, traumatized, whatever it is.
00:37:44.500And then you're going to a place that tells you the solution is in the same place.
00:37:49.720If you're finding your problems, that could potentially cause a lot more anxiety, if you want to use that word, or just a bigger burden.
00:37:57.240Again, it's just saying that you have all of this power.
00:38:01.320And I think once you realize that it exists outside of you, not necessarily, I'm not saying in a pharmaceutical, but in actually the God who created your soul.
00:38:11.260So, yeah, there's just a lot of freedom in that.
00:38:14.740I do have a question based on Abigail Schreier's book and what you just said about kids who feel like they've been through trauma because they've been through a hard thing.
00:38:23.140What we are told today, again, especially women, I would say especially Christian women, that the greatest form of love is empathy.
00:38:31.560And empathy is typically defined as affirming what someone feels as true.
00:38:37.460Not just affirming that their feelings exist, which is one thing, but this phrase, your feelings are valid.
00:38:53.960And in that way, it sounds like what you're saying to the parent is that empathizing to the point of saying, yes, your friend moving away is trauma and we need some kind of medical help to deal with this.
00:39:05.460And not since empathy is actually harmful.
00:39:39.320So, I can empathize with someone's pain and not attach to the story like it's real, right?
00:39:45.780I can feel for somebody's emotional pain that their best friend moved away or that they're getting bullied in school and feel for that person as a human while at the same time supporting their ability to deal with things in life that are challenging because life's going to get so much harder than that.
00:40:07.860You know, I look back at some of the things that my father or my grandparents would say to me that are almost like viewed as abusive today, such as like suck it up or like my grandmothers, you know, would always say we all have a cross to bear, right?
00:40:22.860And it was just her viewpoint of, yes, there's going to be pain.
00:40:27.000Now, what are you going to do about it?
00:40:28.140I mean, this was always my dad's message.
00:41:28.760We should welcome that as our opportunities for that growth, for that transformation.
00:41:33.060And when you take on life that way, it changes everything.
00:41:37.800Here are two lessons that I think are absolutely protective against misery.
00:41:44.660One is everything is happening for you, not to you.
00:41:48.640So the moment that you just look at everything, no matter how painful or traumatic it is, so I'm not going to ascribe to a victim mindset because I've worked with victims.
00:41:58.260I've worked with the most traumatized people.
00:42:01.120And if they don't ascribe to that mindset, why should I ascribe it to anybody else, right?
00:42:06.040If they believe that even what happened to them, as horrible and horrific as it is, can serve their growth and they're not going to let it define them, why should I create that mentality for anyone else?
00:42:18.720So my focus on anyone who comes to me is how can this serve you?
00:42:24.580Now, it might not be that direct right away, and it's got to be at the right time when somebody can digest it.
00:42:29.760And I understand that, and that's built in a relationship.
00:42:32.220And that is why I cannot work any longer outside of my faith.
00:42:37.400And because that's something I believe strongly in.
00:42:41.520And I think if you take another mentality around that, you're going to suffer.
00:42:46.540I don't think I can help you, to be honest with you.
00:42:48.600And the other thing that is really important, and this is where my client, she shared this directly with me, see God in everybody.
00:42:56.700And do you know how that's changed my life?
00:42:59.820I'll now walk down the hall to go out to my waiting room to get a client.
00:43:07.180And I believe I'm walking into the presence of God, that that person was provided for me.
00:43:14.160Now, whether that's true or not, now, I believe it's true, but if someone wants to debate that, and they want to say that I'm delusional, it serves me.
00:46:04.560But he says it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses.
00:46:09.660And what he's meaning in context is not a real god and goddess, but someone who is going to be in heaven one day, be a heavenly being, or in hell.
00:46:17.100He says of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you'd be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
00:46:32.760All day long, we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.
00:46:38.280And then he goes on to talk about how all of our interactions with people, you are interacting with someone who is made in the image of God, with an eternal soul, that is going to end up somewhere.
00:46:51.200And our role in life, especially as Christians, is to aid someone toward that sanctification on a journey to heaven.
00:46:58.780And so that just speaks to the seriousness, especially of what mental health professionals are doing, because you are appearing into the most vulnerable parts of someone's mind and soul.
00:47:09.560And even just thinking about the very definition of vulnerable, you are opening yourself up to injury, which is, again, why the role of the mental health professional is so delicate.
00:47:22.840Yeah. And that's my concern. It's so watered down right now. We're pushing out therapists like it's on an assembly line. And most of the people I'm coming into contact with are not in a position to assume that responsibility.
00:47:38.900I don't think the rigor exists within the educational system. And of course, when you take God out of the educational system and you talk and you take away sacred texts, philosophy, wisdom that is passed down throughout the course of our own humanity, you remove that and you try to provide this very watered down basic version of what creates joy or happiness.
00:48:04.060This is why you're driving so many people through the cycle, right? No one can argue that everything is worse, right? When the more mental health treatments that we provide, the worse we all become.
00:48:15.680And that's my most important statement. In the manner in which we talk about it, in the manner in which we think about it, in the drugs that we're prescribing, the more we provide, the worse people get.
00:48:28.220And the other lies that I see. And this comes from the government. Psychiatry has always been on the right arm of the government, even the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany, right? It's so easy for a psychiatrist to place a label of mental illness on you, me, anyone, and we lose our rights, right? Personality disorder, bipolar disorder.
00:48:54.320The harms that I'm seeing in my clinical practice, it's not somebody taking one drug. I'm seeing 23-year-olds, 24-year-olds on six, seven drugs prescribed since they were 15 or 16 years old. They are numbed out. They are detached. They are sedated. And they, I can't even imagine who they were prior to that type of treatment.
00:49:17.380But I see it as evil. I see it as harmful. What I am proud of is I get on the phone and I get in heated discussions with medical providers. What's interesting is 95% of the people will work with me to safely get these people off these drugs.
00:49:34.380And what you see in time is their spirit returns to them. And they can get better, not because of anything I'm doing, just because we remove the toxicity.
00:49:45.560But there will be times where I'll get on this phone and someone will dig in. And I heard about you. I know what you're putting out there on social media. I don't have to do anything you tell me. I'm the physician. I'm the doctor. And these people are so harmful.
00:50:02.260And that's just increasing. It used to be a time where, you know, a percentage of people came on into my practice with psychiatric drugs. I can't remember the last time someone came into my office not on any psychiatric drug.
00:50:15.740And it is changing us. It is changing who we are. I'm telling you, heed my warnings, everybody. When you take those drugs, they come with consequences. You are altering who you are. It is impacting the brain in ways that nobody can predict. It affects people differently.
00:50:37.140Secondly, it certainly increases the likelihood that you could end in a suicide event, that you could act out violently, that you could have permanent sexual dysfunction. That's just one drug.
00:50:48.620And what happens when you start adding two, three, four in ways that have never been evaluated, that are interacting with each other in ways that we've never studied? It is an experiment, Ali. And it's been an experiment that's been going on for 40 plus years with the general population, right?
00:51:06.440It used to be reserved for people who are really, really struggling, and they were actually isolated from society. Now it's pushed on everyone in society. The more people that you can identify as mentally ill, the more drugs can be prescribed.
00:51:19.200And it is part, in my opinion, it's part of this transhumanist, anti-God agenda. You know, the circles in which I work in and the people that I talk to and the people that I'm friends with honestly believe that we are designed to heal, naturally.
00:51:37.900Even I think the most brilliant physicians understand that, that really what it means to achieve health is sometimes to remove the toxins, remove the poisons, and get yourself back into balance in what you put into your body and how you live your life, the mind-body connection.
00:51:56.340The most dangerous of professionals believe that you are inherently broken and we can experiment with you, with pharmaceuticals and technology and medical interventions and various genetic sequencing and changes.
00:52:10.520Like, we are under mass experimentation. There's no other way to deny that, right?
00:52:15.180And if we don't look at it in terms of some type of spiritual component that also exists within that, because it is a lot of the transhumanists, their belief system is they believe they can achieve a godlike status, that they can live forever, that they can be connected to AI, that there's an interface between computers and humans.
00:52:36.840It's really dark and it's really dystopian. And that has certainly entered into the mental health field. And most people who are listening to this will never think about it that way or have never thought about it that way.
00:52:48.100And it really goes back to the Garden of Eden. I mean, so many things do. I talk about the creation story so often in the fall. I mean, how did Satan tempt Eve? Did God really say, did God really say he manipulated the truth of what God said?
00:53:03.880But then the temptation was, no, no, no, no. If you eat this fruit, you will be like God. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. Part of that was true. Their eyes were open to things that they hadn't been open to before. And they didn't see the consequences of how that would ripple through the rest of human history. And we're still tempted with the same temptation today, wanting to be like God.
00:53:30.100And we are seeing those kind of deadly effects. What do you do with the stories? Because I just have such a hard time when it comes to someone coming to me. And I will get these messages after this. I'll get messages that say, he is exactly right on. I saw this and my husband and my dad, etc.
00:53:48.940And then I'll get the message from the genuinely Christian woman who understands spirituality and the importance of the soul, who will say, look, I was at my darkest moment when I was postpartum. And this antidepressant is the only thing that lifted me out of it.
00:54:07.540I would say, I would have committed suicide. I would have not been able to be there for my child. And I tried praying. I tried going to church. I tried community. I tried exercising. This SSRI, she might say, is the only thing that helped me survive. I have a hard time knowing how to respond to that person. What is your take on it?
00:54:28.360First of all, one thing I've learned right now is anecdotes don't serve me in the same way that they have in the past, because I've been doing this for quite some time. And I've never heard that story or saw it in person. The only time I ever get it is in social media comments. So I haven't witnessed that.
00:54:51.980But I can also explain why that could happen. There's this fascinating study that recently came out. So there was this TADS study, I think it was probably around 2010, 2011. It's actually the study that's used to justify antidepressants for adolescents. TADS standing for the treatment for adolescent depression, something for the S, I can't recall.
00:55:18.220Now, what's interesting is like a lot of the scientific research, it was completely misrepresented. There's a gentleman out of Stanford called John Ioannidis, who is a medical researcher. He's what's known as like a meta researcher. He examines all the medical research. And he came to the conclusion that 90% of the conclusions of the medical research are either misrepresented, overvalued, or flat out wrong, right?
00:55:45.220And so a lot of people attach to these conclusions, but don't understand actually how poor the science is. But the conclusions are supporting an industry or an ideology. So that's important to acknowledge, because that's one of the reasons why these drugs are put out there. There's no postpartum depression drug. And we can get into that, because I think that's an important distinction.
00:56:04.720But they re-evaluated the data from the TADS study. And this just came out this year, 2024, where in that study, they had the teens, the parents, and the doctors predict, because it was blinded, did you get the placebo drug or did you get the antidepressant drug?
00:56:23.940Those who predicted that they got the antidepressant drug when they only received the placebo got better. Those who got the antidepressant drug but believed they got the placebo did not show the same improvement. That is the power of the mind.
00:56:48.220We don't talk about the placebo effect. We did today. We didn't mention the placebo effect in its label, but we talked about the power of the mind today, right?
00:56:58.920So basically, if this woman believes that her brain is broken, that she has this disease called postpartum depression, that it's originated in the mind, emitted from the brain, there is something genetically wrong with her, and she is giving a pill that's labeled for that antidepressant, and she believes it, then she's right.
00:57:24.360I believe that how she creates her reality around it will support that. This saved my life. Now, what's important for us to note is that is her creation. That is what she believes. This is why we have to have clinical trials. This is why I believe in science, that it is to protect us from harmful interventions.
00:57:46.960There was a time where bloodletting was a very acceptable medical treatment until they implemented the empirical method and realized that it wasn't. And that was very hard at the time for physicians, when you look in medical history, to give that up because they saw it. They saw that it worked.
00:58:04.180So this goes back to empathy and affirming. Like, I can feel your pain. I can understand what you're going through. I can connect with you on a human level. And I don't have to agree with your idea, right? Very similar to gender ideology, right?
00:58:18.080And the last time I was here sitting in this chair, you threw that at me. And I was scared to address it. I was scared to address it because of clients I had in front of me. I was scared to address it because of what my profession tells me, that I could lose my license if I somehow speak out of line to what the rules are or what the laws are of my profession.
00:58:37.920And I have to somehow attest to this affirmative care model. And that's part of where my shame has been, that I didn't speak out against that, when I absolutely should have. Now, I danced around it and said I was concerned for the parents, which was true.
00:58:53.300But I didn't really share how the idea that our culture has created, that you could somehow be born into the wrong body, which is an idea that our culture has created, harms people, right? It absolutely harms people. We can't deny that.
00:59:10.280And I watched your debate with the trans activist. And one of my takeaways was how one can irresponsibly throw out data to support an argument. And you have much more patience than I do. And that's where I thought, you know, the God was in you.
00:59:29.020And I've totally felt that. I really did. I felt the Holy Spirit keeping and helping me see, you know, back to the amazing testimony that you told. And this is obviously a much different scenario than that. But I really did in that moment feel the Holy Spirit tell me the image of God is in that person. This person is hurting. I don't think he fully told me everything that, you know, had hurt him in his life. Be patient.
00:59:56.840I really did. So I can't take credit for that at all. But I felt that in that moment, someone saying, hold back, because it's not my natural. My natural is because, oh my gosh, this ideology is killing people how I see it. It's mutilating people's bodies. I'm so angry with you that you're promoting it to kids. And yeah, yeah, God is amazing.
01:00:17.880Yes. And I heard that in you. And I was amazed by how that compassionate approach is probably going to change hearts versus the anger. And that's been my problem, right? That's been my challenge has been with the anger that I feel. That I want to lash out. That I want to see these people as evil and harmful and I want to go after them, right?
01:00:43.800And that's not how you change hearts. And that's not how you change minds. You change hearts and minds with stories, with connection. And so where this gentleman, his argument was, I trust the professionals, which might be one of the more dangerous arguments that a person can make this time.
01:01:04.200First of all, it's a lie. First of all, it's a lie. There is no consensus. WPATH doesn't speak for me. The American Psychological Association does not speak for me. I'm a clinical psychologist. There is no consensus on the views of transgender youth.
01:01:23.400In fact, there's organizations around the world of medical doctors, of psychologists, of mental health professionals who have genuine concerns and can speak to a lot of the things that you said. And it's so fascinating because, you know, I treat eating disorders. I do treat OCD.
01:01:40.720And then there's an obsessive compulsive disorder called body dysmorphic disorder. And so it's this intense focus on a body part that you believe is really ugly, right? And it creates a lot of anxiety and a lot of shame. And the obsessive part is the degree of focus on it, right?
01:02:01.240And it goes back to you never really see anyone who is truly doing well when they focus on themselves. But we know that trying to get plastic surgery or to change the body creates harm. Like that's known in my field. When I'm working with somebody, my suggestion would never be change that body part and you're going to feel better.
01:02:21.060If I have a 14-year-old who is anorexic underweight and they're dying and they hate their body and they believe that they will feel better if they're 85 pounds, I would never affirm that reality. But then somebody comes in the same vulnerable state and I'm supposed to affirm the idea that they were born into the wrong body?
01:02:40.080That is in direct conflict with what we know about how to help people. And that's why it's not a science-driven profession, right? If it was a science-driven profession, we wouldn't talk about drugging emotional states. We wouldn't talk about cross-sex hormones or trying to change the body of a vulnerable adolescent.
01:03:04.600And wait, I have a question here because I'm thinking about this. On the one hand, we've just been talking about how psychiatry doesn't really believe there's a soul, that you're kind of just a body. Everything can be explained by that. At the same time, there's this idea that's inherent in gender ideology that says who you really are is in almost like a spiritual sense is what you feel on the inside and it can't be explained by your body.
01:03:31.360So it almost is a type of soul. It's like a gendered soul that you think actually trumps your physical reality. So I don't know if you've thought about it in those terms or what the confusion is there. How can psychiatry simultaneously say there is no soul and also say there is this inner self that is independent from the body that tells you who you really are when it comes to gender?
01:03:55.360Is it just dissonant and like there's no explanation for it? Or is there some kind of ideological connection?
01:04:01.940You know, it's interesting because I haven't necessarily thought about it that way until you just mentioned it. But you see this is that in a field like psychiatry, for example, where there's not a strong science base is they'll create ideas to fit what they do, right? They're making things up as they go along.
01:04:18.200So even when we talk about the value of antidepressants, it started with the chemical imbalance theory. And once that's kind of disputed, you know, they're just going to transition to something else. There's going to be some other junk science or some other explanation that's going to support their intervention.
01:04:32.480Even the it's not to say that everyone who goes into psychiatry is an evil person and is not in their mind. I think they're doing what they believe is correct or it's right. But there's a dissonance right there. You can't you take an oath not to create harm.
01:04:47.100So if you actually learn that the prescriptions that you are writing or the ideas you are ascribing to are actually creating harm, what do you do with that information, right? It does create a dissonance and you have to resolve that dissonance. And when you resolve that dissonance, you're probably going to intellectualize it in some way. And I think that pretty much is the explanation.
01:05:17.100I do want to hear what you have to say about there not being a postpartum depression drug. There's a lot of people in this audience who have experienced some kind of, you know, we used to call it baby blues. Maybe they feel, though, that they were really in a state of depression or anxiety. So you talked about how, you know, it's hard to treat that with just an SSRI. So what do you mean?
01:05:41.040Yeah, I've jumped into this and consulted with experts on this. And one person I want to defer to and actually promote is Dr. Adam Urato. He's a maternal and fetal medicine physician, Harvard trained, and he's in Massachusetts. And he posts a lot of research on this. He'll post videos. I really want to support his work because I think he's reasonable. He's objective. And what I like about Dr. Urato is this, is he serves the families in his community.
01:06:11.040So he works in the town that he grew up in. And in our modern medical system, you become affiliated with these large-scale hospital-based networks. And you don't develop the same personal connection with your patients that you do if you were independent and you were working in your community and you develop those strong bonds and connections and you're accountable to mothers, for example.
01:06:39.860So I just like who he is as a man. And I trust that. And he speaks out and he says chemicals have consequences, right? And it's very important to state that these are chemical compounds made in a factory and they have consequences.
01:06:52.200Here is what your audience should know. There are no approved SSRI antidepressant drugs for postpartum depression. When the FDA doesn't even approve it, and the FDA is corrupt and has approved drugs that harm people routinely throughout history, when they don't have a drug that's approved, understand that it is an experimental medical intervention.
01:07:16.600There is one drug that has approved by the FDA for postpartum depression. God, I'm going to butcher this. It begins with a Z, Zurove or something to that nature. I don't think it really matters. So I dug into the research there.
01:07:37.060First of all, what's really interesting, as with many clinical trials, is the placebo drug did really well in the trials. If you take this drug, which is a steroidal, it's an oral steroid, they call it an oral steroidal antidepressant. So they use the antidepressant name again, because language is powerful.
01:07:56.820But you can't operate a vehicle. What mother is going to take a drug with all these side effects, which include suicidal thoughts, worsening mood, a myriad of other ones, where you can't even operate a vehicle? Like, how do you get to your appointments? How do you take care of an infant when you can't operate a vehicle?
01:08:20.820Right. Okay. SSRIs are passed through the breast milk. They absolutely impact fetal development. The published research on that is clear. Neurodevelopmental problems, cognitive disorders, autism.
01:08:38.840Are you talking about when she takes it while pregnant or while breastfeeding?
01:08:46.860A lot of babies are born dependent and in withdrawal on SSRIs. It's published literature. And why does that happen, Allie? It's because of the mental illness delusion, right? The psychiatrist saying that your mental illness might be worse than the side effects of the drug. Oh, really? A special needs child?
01:09:09.340A baby born? A baby born? That in withdrawal? Imagine what a mother would go through. If they're actually aware of this information, they know they took SSRIs and you have an autistic child, right? What do you think that's going to do to depression?
01:09:26.060So I would never, for a family member, for a friend, for a client, under any circumstances, any circumstances at all, I need to be clear, I need to be definitive, to ever take a psychiatric drug while pregnant because it's going to impact the baby or any drug that isn't absolutely proven to be safe for you and the baby.
01:09:52.480And you're not going to find many. Okay? Now, that doesn't underscore the importance of postpartum depression and having a nuanced, important discussion around it.
01:10:03.200I just recently had a young mother on my podcast by the name of Kate Galvin, who is now just doing a lot of health coaching because she went through postpartum depression. Young mother, she's actually a fan of your show. She's a listener. It was one of the most informative episodes that I've recorded.
01:10:26.400And her brilliance on that felt like you were in the presence of God as well. And I find I get more critical discussions around these subjects when I get outside of the professionals, because the professionals, by way of their training, are just brainwashed.
01:10:42.840So when I get a young mother who's gone through it, we spoke to the complexity of postpartum depression. First of all, it's a cultural problem. We know it's a cultural problem, right?
01:10:53.660What really does impact postpartum depression? Significant hormonal changes that a mother is going through. And there's probably a way to support that too, nutritionally, with sleep, with family being around them.
01:11:09.820Like what we do to women in our modern society is sinful, in my opinion, right? Fathers, family members, community members should really be protecting young mothers as we have done throughout history, right? Now that's part of the harms of the capitalistic world that we serve, right? We serve industry. We're not serving our families in the same way.
01:11:35.100And that's why a lot of these institutions that we've relied on, the veil's kind of been lifted in so many ways. And it creates a lot of fear for so many people that when there's awakening occurs, we realize that we have to return to a lot of traditional ways in community.
01:11:53.840So sleep deprivation is critically important. I had Lily Nichols, who's a nutritionist. Are you aware of Lily Nichols?
01:12:02.800Yes, I do. Well, I'm thinking, I'm like, I definitely know that name. Maybe I follow her.
01:12:21.600And she spoke to what happens postpartum to a mother with nutritional deficiencies, and then how that presents in what the medical establishment would be viewing as psychiatric, right?
01:12:35.840And that's the problem with what's been melded and conflated together in the psychiatric world, right? Is that often the label prevents further exploration of what is really going on medically, right?
01:12:50.560See, no one's depressed because they have major depressive disorder. No one's depressed because they have postpartum depression.
01:12:58.900They may be depressed because of sleep deprivation. They might be struggling internally with what it means to be a mother.
01:13:07.480I remember when my second daughter was born, and my wife had this guilt that she wasn't attending to the needs of our two-year-old, right? Because so much was being given to the infant. And, of course, there's so many hormonal changes that are fueling mood shifts and so forth. And I remember just being really despair and her being in despair about not being able to serve Madison's needs.
01:14:01.300There's so many factors that are so important in serving that.
01:14:05.140But we're in such a fear-based culture, because this is what the media is going to do. They're going to promote a story of some mother who becomes psychotic and drives into a lake with her children. And then they're going to call that postpartum depression to put the fear of God in all mothers that if they experience mood changes or they're struggling.
01:14:23.780They're going to kill their baby. Yeah.
01:14:25.080And so then they go into the medical system, and they go on experimental mind and mood-altering drugs that haven't been researched long-term.
01:14:33.900Yeah. You know, we get this, like, questionnaire in our postpartum appointments that is basically like, do you find yourself crying for any reason? And I'm always like, yeah. I mean, I had a baby two weeks ago, and so that does happen.
01:14:49.500And I mean, thankfully, I've never been medicated. I do look back after my first pregnancy, and there have been times where I've wondered, wow, did I have postpartum depression?
01:14:58.000But then, as you were talking, I was thinking about all of the factors there. First, you're a new mom. I remember it was July, our air conditioning went out.
01:15:05.500I felt like I was alone in a lot of ways and didn't know what I was doing. Also, there's a whole problem with the medical industry and pushing things like Pitocin, which is the artificial form of oxytocin, which I'm pretty sure that there is a study that shows that there's something like a 20% increase in chance of, I guess you wouldn't call it depression.
01:15:25.680I don't know what it is. Some form of baby blues after birth when you use Pitocin versus just relying on the natural hormone. That happened in my first birth. There's so many different parts of this, and as you said, even culturally, and I'm not shaming people whose lives have led them to have babies later.
01:15:41.260It's just the way that it is right now, is that when everyone was having babies when they were 20, you had not only aunts and grandmothers, but maybe great-grandmother around, all living in the same place. You had so much support.
01:15:55.860Well, my grandmother died three months after my first baby was born. It's just not the same. You don't have the same kind of generational support. So you're right. That can't be fixed by a pill.
01:16:06.640Yeah, and you also speak to the toxicities that we're exposed to that have unknown consequences, right? The endocrine disruptors. Kate Galvin, who's on my podcast, had a thyroid condition that went undetected.
01:16:17.440It was undiagnosed. And then once that got corrected, once she solved that issue, and she solved it naturally, she found a way to solve it naturally with a number of medical, another of natural interventions around nutrition and sun exposure and other things.
01:16:34.320She felt a lot better. And so there are legitimate medical issues, and there might be the need for medicines. I'm very careful about how I use the word medicine, right? Because psychiatric drugs are not medicine. They're drugs. They're pharmaceuticals.
01:16:49.540But there are, and you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, go all or nothing. There are some medicines that actually do target and are medicinal, right?
01:17:00.500They correct something that is like there's a deficiency or so forth. I think like blood pressure, for example, is a great one. And Dr. Urato talks about this. Like chemicals have consequences. And we may treat a pregnant mother with blood pressure medication. We're not going to sit there and wait for her to have an aneurysm, right? Or something of that nature.
01:17:21.900And is there potential consequences to the baby? We have to be open about that. But now we're measuring it against the risks of death and the risk to the baby if you have high blood pressure.
01:17:35.020That's not the same as this concept of mental illness, of a mental illness that you're going to take a drug and that's somehow going to protect you from it, which is not proven. It's not correcting anything. There's no deficiency that we've identified.
01:17:51.900There are a lot of people listening to this. Some people hearing what you're saying for the first time and others who are like, yeah, I've been thinking this too, but I don't know where to turn.
01:18:09.460They don't know how to find a doctor, healthcare providers that are going to align with these values.
01:18:15.800And so can you tell us about the collective that you've started to help patients and potential patients find someone that will support them?
01:18:23.060Yeah. So thank you so much because I do want to give credit to your audience and the opportunity for me to be on this podcast.
01:18:31.220It was yours and Alex Clark's podcast that inspired this.
01:18:37.140And this is where we talked about earlier that you have to give up on what your life is supposed to be and you have to just go with what the calling is.
01:18:45.460And so here's been my challenge since I've been on your podcast initially because you have such a large audience and they're an amazing audience.
01:18:53.800Like they're just really, really good people.
01:18:57.860And I wish I could get back to everybody, but there is not a day goes by that I don't get an email.
01:19:04.120Some of the overwhelming emails have been, we really need some help.
01:19:09.900We need to find somebody who's not going to push these ideologies, who's going to be able to provide informed consent, who we know we can trust.
01:19:24.200There's not many people like me speaking out against this.
01:19:28.020And it's hard for me to hire mental health professionals.
01:19:32.180So how am I going to be able to recommend somebody who is in Nevada, Texas, California or so forth?
01:19:39.200But what I do, and this is interesting, Allie, and this I can understand, is I get a lot of people who are in either the medical field or are mental health professionals who send me emails thanking me for speaking out, that I'm speaking to exactly what they're going through.
01:19:58.060But they just can't do anything about it right now because of the systems that they work in.
01:20:59.040Is that whenever there is an intervention, therapy included, we have a legal mandate, an ethical mandate, to explain to them the limitations of that intervention.
01:21:11.480We have to talk about the potential costs, harms, and any perceived benefits.
01:21:18.840We also have to explain to them what alternatives might exist.
01:21:23.980So in today's podcast, we actually talked about alternatives to the mental health system, right?
01:21:29.040We talked about alternatives to the idea of therapy or psychiatric drugs.
01:21:34.060And so I don't expect anyone today to blindly trust what I'm telling you.
01:21:47.780But you know when you come and see me, there's going to be a high moral and ethical standard because I am not, at this point, moving forward,
01:21:58.240the medical authority is not my authority, and it never will be.
01:22:07.980I have a responsibility to you, as we all do as medical professionals.
01:22:12.160And if we don't do something about it, Allie, we're at risk of losing a lot.
01:22:17.340We haven't been doing anything about it.
01:22:19.180We go into these medical professionals, we go into these hospital systems, and we blindly sign these consent forms that attests to our knowledge of what's being provided,
01:22:29.200and no doctor is accountable or responsible right now for giving us informed consent.
01:22:33.420The only way we can make change is if we mass resist and make a movement.
01:22:40.720So this is an opportunity, and this is in the very foundation groundwork of this.
01:22:49.380Like I have to build money to build this platform.
01:22:53.460And that's hard for me to do because that's not my area of expertise.
01:22:56.700So we want to build a platform where clinicians across the healthcare spectrum attest to that declaration, and there'll be a searchable database for people to go on and say, who's in my locality, right?
01:23:23.080And so that's part one, and I can only do that when I can build enough funds to be able to support that, to build that platform, and people have to sign up for it.
01:24:39.480Well, one, we get information from podcasts.
01:24:41.360What a blessing that has been, that we get out of the corporate media, and professionals have the freedom to be able to talk about what they're actually experiencing, what they're actually reading.
01:24:51.320Because for a long time, it's been these corrupt organizations who are speaking for everybody.
01:24:56.860And if you act out of line, well, then you are violating your principles.
01:25:01.840So we need that informed consent piece.
01:25:04.680But how about a network, a large-scale network of media and studies, not to push an agenda.
01:25:15.340Because if you want to stay within the medical authority, and you want to stay in the system exists, and there could be some benefits to that.
01:25:23.560There are some benefits in our medical world.
01:25:25.020We do have some great medical professionals.
01:25:26.620But it's your responsibility, because it has to be our responsibility now, we can't blindly trust anymore, to be able to do some research and understand and ask the questions.
01:25:36.400We can't sit there and expect these eight-minute sessions that are in primary care and medical systems that are actually serving financial interests and not serving patient well-being to be the norm.
01:25:47.840So we need the time to ask those hard questions.
01:25:50.560You need to question your medical professional.
01:25:53.060If we've learned anything from COVID, you cannot blindly trust them.
01:26:33.260I should never have actually even said that.
01:26:35.600Because if I'm accountable to my patients, and I'm not a medical professional, I'm a clinical psychologist, and I can do the research, and I can talk to people, well, then you have that responsibility.