Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 821 ｜ Why Antidepressants Don’t Fix Depression ｜ Guest： Dr. Roger McFillin

00:00:00.000 There has been a sharp increase in the prescription of drugs for depression and anxiety in recent years, as well as mood-altering medication for children.

00:00:09.620 What's really going on here, and what are the consequences of this alarming trend?

00:00:13.960 Today's guest, clinical psychologist Dr. Roger McFillan, has the fascinating answer.

00:00:19.360 This is part one of our two-part conversation on the truth about mental health and the powerful industry behind it.

00:00:26.940 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:29.260 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:30.560 Use code ALLY at checkout.

00:00:32.300 That's GoodRanchers.com, code ALLY.

00:00:43.540 Dr. McFillan, thanks so much for joining us.

00:00:46.300 For those who may not know, can you just tell us who you are and what you do?

00:00:49.720 Yes.

00:00:50.140 First of all, thank you for having me.

00:00:51.500 Congratulations, by the way.

00:00:52.480 Thank you.

00:00:52.980 My name is Dr. Roger McFillan.

00:00:54.240 I am a clinical psychologist.

00:00:55.620 I'm also the co-host of the podcast, Radically Genuine.

00:00:59.720 I run a large group practice in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour north of Philly.

00:01:06.260 And I think a lot of what's brought me onto various podcasts and here today is what I'm being vocal about on social media and through the podcast, which is, to be honest with you, it's really just being critical of my field in general.

00:01:19.960 From the overprescription of psychiatric drugs, what typical therapy has become, the ideology that's influencing it.

00:01:29.420 In fact, I make pretty controversial statements that I believe that entering into the system, the mental health system, does create harm and could create harm.

00:01:39.820 And I've tried to provide information, science-based information, to help people make informed decisions, as well as just try to communicate to parents who have children and adolescents who are struggling about what might be the safest, most effective course.

00:01:54.440 So you became a psychologist, but you were critical kind of of psychology, the industry.

00:02:02.240 How did that happen?

00:02:04.320 Did you go into it critical and wanting to change things?

00:02:07.080 Or did you kind of learn, like look around at some point and say, oh, this is not what I thought it was?

00:02:13.140 Yeah, interesting story.

00:02:14.080 I don't think when I was in undergrad, my intention was not to be a clinical psychologist.

00:02:19.400 I thought I was going to be a teacher and a football coach.

00:02:22.460 And I accepted a job right after undergrad, as I was determining my next steps at a children's psychiatric hospital.

00:02:30.360 And to be honest, what I observed in that setting, and this is back in 1999, 2000, was absolutely appalling.

00:02:36.620 I worked on a unit ages 5 to 10.

00:02:40.280 So these are relatively very young kids who came from very abusive and traumatic backgrounds.

00:02:45.380 So these children would react as you would expect anybody would who was under a trauma response, abuse in homes, very difficult upbringings and violence in their homes.

00:02:56.840 And I just observed how the mental health system worked with these kids.

00:03:00.440 There was a psychiatrist on the unit who would basically ask basic questions.

00:03:05.560 What is your name?

00:03:07.020 Why are you here?

00:03:08.120 And then write up a pretty thorough psychiatric evaluation and prescribe one or often multiple psychiatric drugs.

00:03:15.960 And I saw these kids deteriorate.

00:03:18.620 I really did.

00:03:19.680 It was my first observation of what mental health care was.

00:03:24.940 In a lot of ways, it was the sedation of behavior.

00:03:29.100 And they viewed at that time, and I think still today, that an effective mental health treatment is when somebody numbs their own emotional states or they become sedative.

00:03:41.100 And we'd see kids who were sleeping 16 hours a day.

00:03:45.680 Wow.

00:03:46.080 The life was taken out of them.

00:03:48.420 After they were put on these prescriptions, they started sleeping.

00:03:51.600 They were placed on these drugs.

00:03:52.640 And so if you're going into a psychiatric hospital, obviously you are acting out aggressively generally or even at that age kind of talking about suicide.

00:04:02.800 And so they would view the treatment as if they became less aggressive.

00:04:09.360 So it was often creating, you know, lethargy and, you know, just sedation.

00:04:14.980 And so that was upsetting and disturbing for me because it was in contrast with everything that I was taught growing up or everything that I believed about what it takes to be able to overcome challenges.

00:04:25.440 For if you're going through an adverse period in your life, and I grew up in a Catholic family, and I was always taught that our life has purpose and meaning, and the struggles that exist in our lives are something that we can expect.

00:04:42.000 But like anything, they're temporary.

00:04:43.540 And so observing how children were taken care of in that environment did inspire me to take steps with my education and do a lot of training.

00:04:53.960 Before I became a clinical psychologist, I also worked with youth in the juvenile justice system who were also prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs as a way of managing behavior.

00:05:05.400 And I just witnessed the cultural shift.

00:05:08.060 And I was, I'm 46 years old, so I saw the cultural shift from the 80s into the 90s that really started when Prozac was brought to market.

00:05:18.700 And the United States is one of only two countries where direct-to-consumer marketing exists from pharmaceutical companies.

00:05:26.360 So in a lot of ways, we are mass conditioned to believe that our emotional states are something that may be outside of our control, that they are genetic or related to some imbalance of specific brain chemicals.

00:05:39.060 In fact, that was advertised to us, mass advertising throughout the 90s into the 2000s.

00:05:44.600 So when I had this exposure to the mental health system at that time early on, it was really at the height of all this.

00:05:50.220 The truth of the matter is, and many of your viewers probably are not aware, that there's never such a thing as a chemical imbalance.

00:05:59.360 That it was a theory that was initially identified by scientists back in the 50s or 60s to try to understand why some people might be depressed in comparison to others.

00:06:11.460 And the drug companies, they really took off with this, this idea that like depression, for example, is related to deficiencies in serotonin.

00:06:22.100 And if you can take this pill, you can correct these deficiencies in serotonin and almost like a happy pill.

00:06:28.680 And it was, it really was marketed in that way.

00:06:31.760 And it shifted an entire culture of how we think about our own mental health.

00:06:41.460 Okay, there's so much in there that I want to ask about before we get to what I think is going to be one of the most interesting parts of this conversation, the whole chemical imbalance debate.

00:06:59.100 You mentioned Prozac.

00:07:00.460 When Prozac came to the market, you saw this culture shift kind of in the 80s, 90s, maybe even early 2000s.

00:07:06.840 Prozac is antidepressant medication.

00:07:09.360 It's an SSRI.

00:07:10.220 I don't like to use the word antidepressant because I think it's false marketing.

00:07:13.860 Okay.

00:07:14.520 But it is an antidepressant.

00:07:16.040 SSRI stands for?

00:07:17.440 Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

00:07:20.360 Reuptake inhibitor.

00:07:21.540 Okay, got it.

00:07:22.660 And what was it about Prozac that kind of shifted things in your mind?

00:07:28.000 Well, I think the pharmaceutical companies are incredibly powerful, as we all know.

00:07:33.880 And on my podcast, I've said, I think they are the most lucrative criminal organization that exists globally.

00:07:41.140 And I don't think that's an outrageous statement.

00:07:43.700 All you have to do is look at the fines, the lawsuits.

00:07:47.080 And the marketing is very distorted, right?

00:07:51.040 It began to be pushed through major television networks.

00:07:55.700 Even if you watch a movie, they started talking about taking your meds or I'm in balance.

00:08:00.680 These little words are just like, they're placed in front of us and we become conditioned.

00:08:05.140 And of course, there's the magazine covers where mental health is a brain disorder.

00:08:12.900 And there was a ton of money that was dumped into this through the NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health, throughout the 90s, billions in trying to identify some brain-related source of our own distress.

00:08:26.500 And, you know, as we all know, what we experience and what we feel is very complicated, right?

00:08:31.640 There is biological, social, relational, spiritual complexities to what we feel and to what we experience.

00:08:41.000 And often our emotions are directly related to what's happening in our environment or internally in our own minds.

00:08:48.200 And so they're definitely kind of biologically ingrained.

00:08:52.620 I talk about emotions as being gifts because if we learn to utilize our emotions, that they're for a reason.

00:08:59.380 They're there for us to either indicate potential threat or danger or there's something amiss in our life, solve problems that exist.

00:09:06.880 These emotions are powerful indicators and the education around that matters.

00:09:12.140 Like when you raise your children, when they experience some emotional reaction or response to something, my guess is you're not going to believe that it's something outside of their control and they have a medical illness that would require a pharmaceutical.

00:09:26.020 Instead, you're probably going to teach them some emotional literacy, that your emotions make sense based on what you're thinking about or what's happening.

00:09:34.440 And you're going to help them be able to manage their emotions in order to be able to be productive and effective in life, whether that's in relationships or academically or in sports or whatever they're doing.

00:09:46.740 We need to be able to be able to manage our emotions.

00:09:49.120 If I'm going to come on to this podcast and feel anxious, I'm not going to judge that emotion of anxiety as something that is wrong or that is something that I shouldn't feel.

00:10:00.800 It makes sense given the environment that I'm in.

00:10:04.840 It's an important conversation.

00:10:06.700 It's a new audience for me.

00:10:08.260 So I should feel a bit of anxiety.

00:10:10.720 But throughout the 90s into the 2000s, we started talking about just normal human reactions as if they're symptoms of a medical illness.

00:10:19.380 It's changed a lot in American culture.

00:10:22.120 Yeah.

00:10:22.940 And something that you said that I thought was interesting that I don't think many Americans consider because we're so used to this is that it's only here that you said that pharmaceutical companies sell directly to the consumer.

00:10:35.860 So that's why we see like a commercial for Prozac or whatever it is.

00:10:40.920 And it says, ask your doctor.

00:10:43.380 So we're supposed to go to our doctor and say, oh, I think I need Prozac because the 60 second commercial, it listed my symptoms and said it can make me feel better.

00:10:52.560 And so I should be prescribed this.

00:10:55.460 Is that kind of is that what you're talking about, that that's unique here in America and not in other places?

00:11:01.520 United States and New Zealand, I think, are the only two countries.

00:11:04.400 So the idea that an individual can go to their doctor in order to get a pharmaceutical without having the background knowledge or the understanding of what that drug actually does is that we're all kind of victims to what the marketing is.

00:11:18.020 Yeah.

00:11:18.300 What is really concerning to me, Ali, is that currently 80 percent of all psychiatric drugs are prescribed in primary care settings.

00:11:26.060 So I just got done reading the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines because I was trying to make sense of how are we seeing this dramatic increase in mind and mood altering psychiatric drugs for children and adolescents.

00:11:40.100 And in popular media and culture, they speak about it as if the COVID-19 lockdowns and the isolation are what fueled a mental health crisis.

00:11:52.440 And I don't deny that.

00:11:53.620 And I think that was a primary factor.

00:11:56.440 But we were seeing the statistics leading up to this of how many kids were going to their doctors and saying, I just don't feel well or I feel sad.

00:12:06.980 Now, teens don't even use the word sad anymore.

00:12:10.540 It's depressed.

00:12:11.340 It's depressed.

00:12:12.280 Yeah.

00:12:12.720 And that is from marketing, right?

00:12:14.860 Because what you feel is no longer normal.

00:12:18.200 And what you feel is a potential medical illness.

00:12:22.360 And there's also, you know, a label now that you can assign to yourself.

00:12:26.140 And that label has meaning.

00:12:28.000 In teenage life, it can also provide you a certain disability status and a connection with others.

00:12:36.340 So imagine being a vulnerable teenager who's struggling emotionally and you feel like you're just on the outside, that you're struggling relationally.

00:12:44.220 It's another group that you can adopt to.

00:12:49.860 Like, oh, I'm depressed or I'm mentally ill.

00:12:53.560 The word is really, really being thrown around.

00:12:55.580 In fact, I think I was most shocked a couple of years ago when a young girl said, called herself a Lexaho.

00:13:02.180 Lexaho for the teenage girls who take the antidepressant Lexapro.

00:13:08.660 And so it is so pervasive.

00:13:11.380 And there's the assumption that these drugs must be safe and effective or why would our doctors be prescribing them?

00:13:17.860 They wouldn't even be available.

00:13:19.100 The FDA wouldn't even approve them if they weren't safe and effective.

00:13:21.640 And to be honest, you know, there was a time where I thought that had to be true.

00:13:25.640 I live in the United States of America.

00:13:27.140 Of course, our government protects us until I took the time to really do the research because I had to resolve the conflict between what I'm being told and what I'm seeing in front of me.

00:13:39.900 And what I was seeing in front of me was a lot of young people, mostly under the age of 25, just doing poorly with the diagnosis of being mentally ill, of the drugs that they were taking.

00:13:53.860 And what that leads to is going right back to your doctor, who's going to either up the dose or prescribe you another one.

00:14:00.760 And now I think we're looking at close to one in five Americans are taking some form of a psychiatric drugs.

00:14:06.860 And I think the outcomes are absolutely horrific in what it's doing to the physical and mental health.

00:14:13.260 But also, it's that profound shift in how you think about your experience.

00:14:18.640 So as a psychologist, my passion is around helping people create a life of value and one that's worth living.

00:14:27.040 And I'm not going to sell an idea to them that you're going to go through life without pain or you're going to go through life without some sort of struggle or hardship.

00:14:37.160 Or that you're entitled to that kind of life.

00:14:39.440 Or that's sold to us.

00:14:41.500 And I did read your book, by the way, on the flight in here.

00:14:44.440 And so a lot of those messages really resonated with me because it's the difference between what is sold to us in popular culture and its influence.

00:14:53.440 I talk about it in terms of almost like a brainwashing, that young people believe that they should feel good all the time.

00:15:03.080 And if they don't feel good, then there's something wrong with them.

00:15:06.540 And my message is if you don't feel good, you're normal.

00:15:10.200 Yeah.

00:15:10.580 And life is really hard.

00:15:12.360 And even if you have the most blessed life, life is going to be challenging.

00:15:16.680 I think that is the thing that kind of trips people up.

00:15:31.540 People who do have, I don't know if I'm using the correct psychological terms, but they do have depressive episodes.

00:15:38.800 Or maybe there's someone who they look at all the factors in their life.

00:15:42.080 They're eating healthy.

00:15:43.220 They're plugged into a church.

00:15:44.360 So they have community.

00:15:45.140 They have a great family.

00:15:46.140 They have an okay job.

00:15:47.500 And still they find themselves almost being like pulled down into the state of like of sadness or depression.

00:15:54.080 Or they always feel a simmering sadness or anxiety underneath them.

00:15:59.040 I think that we are told that, okay, that kind of person does have, though, some kind of chemical imbalance.

00:16:05.300 We can't look at any of the factors in their life.

00:16:07.440 So it must be that they need this SSRI or something like that.

00:16:11.400 So with someone who has kind of what we might call inexplicable depression or depressive episodes, like is there ever to you a need or justification for those SSRIs?

00:16:24.580 Or what would you tell that person?

00:16:26.440 It's a good question.

00:16:27.740 First, I don't think that when somebody experienced depression that it's inexplicable.

00:16:32.580 They might not have awareness on the outside.

00:16:35.400 Maybe there's things in their life that look like everything is in order, but it is the internal world is important as well.

00:16:41.600 Yeah.

00:16:41.880 Right.

00:16:42.080 The manner in which we view ourselves and our relationship to our family, our purpose, our job, our community, what we think, how we feel.

00:16:53.420 But it's also much more complicated that it's also like what we put into our bodies and how much we move.

00:16:58.560 And there's so many other complex factors because the United States society is metabolically sick in so many different ways.

00:17:07.600 And that's another conversation we can add that.

00:17:10.140 But your question is a good one.

00:17:11.480 Is there anybody who could benefit from, let's say, an antidepressant?

00:17:16.580 And so I just want to be science-based on this.

00:17:19.440 So when I look at the data and the research study, this research study is over 40 years.

00:17:26.980 What becomes really clear to me is this, is it's very difficult to distinguish the drug group from a placebo group in a lot of these trials.

00:17:36.720 So what that means is a lot of people get better from a placebo, which is an inert substance.

00:17:46.040 They think they're getting the drug.

00:17:48.260 And that's important because there's a mind-body connection and experience that I don't know if we've really tapped into and how powerful that is.

00:17:59.440 However, I do want to say this, is that there are a small group of people who will say they've benefited from antidepressants that are related to something that I think happens from taking the drug with a specific group of people.

00:18:19.140 Now, we're all different.

00:18:20.140 We're biologically different.

00:18:21.900 And everyone should know that one person taking the drug will have a different effect from another person taking the drug.

00:18:27.920 But in the academics and researchers that I trust, the SSRI can create emotional numbing.

00:18:38.200 Emotional numbing for someone who may be in quite intense pain could be viewed as a relief temporarily.

00:18:47.020 Right.

00:18:47.380 My concern with the drugs are the risks of taking the drugs are minimized.

00:18:52.460 So there is a group of harmed patients globally who are in quite a movement right now to try to bring this information to the attention of the global public.

00:19:03.260 One of them is a group who talks about post-SSRI sexual dysfunction.

00:19:08.700 So that emotional numbing can also numb the genitals even permanently. 0.66

00:19:12.940 And I would say as a psychologist that the ultimate recovery from anyone who's really struggling, if they're depressed, is going to go way beyond emotional numbing.

00:19:23.420 Emotional numbing can happen when you drink alcohol.

00:19:27.060 Emotional numbing can, from smoking marijuana, you can turn to many drugs to emotionally numb out.

00:19:33.420 In my opinion, that's not antidepressant.

00:19:36.500 That is a way that you're responding to how you're feeling.

00:19:40.020 And that's the drug companies set up these trials that way, that they're short term, six to eight weeks, yet people are taking antidepressants for decades.

00:19:50.820 We don't have any data on their safety, on their efficacy long term.

00:19:54.880 It's quite a risk.

00:19:56.640 But to view emotional health as a decrease of emotions, I think is problematic.

00:20:02.080 So if you can create a symptom checklist of various feelings around depression, and depression is a concept too.

00:20:08.720 It's not like you go to your doctor and get a medical test or a brain scan and they say, well, Ali, we see that you are suffering from major depressive disorder.

00:20:17.320 It is a subjective experience.

00:20:19.080 And so we are relying upon a person's ability to communicate what they're going through, which can also be challenging too, because, you know, when you meet somebody, especially when you do the work that I do, you realize that you don't really know somebody until, you know, weeks, months down the line, because a relationship has to be built.

00:20:38.720 So you go into a doctor and in 15 minutes, you start describing your experience, it can be easily misunderstood and misrepresented, it can be taken out of context, and you can be assigned a label.

00:20:49.000 And now you're seeing your life through that lens.

00:20:52.680 And so taking a pill and in measuring in a very short amount of time, and viewing those symptoms decreasing as emotional health or well being, I think is problematic.

00:21:03.880 The problem with a lot of these trials is blind was broken.

00:21:06.360 So we have to do randomized clinical control trials as a way to determine whether the drug has any sort of effect over a placebo group.

00:21:14.020 But almost everyone who took the SSRI, including the doctors, knew that they were on an SSRI.

00:21:19.180 It's a mood and mind altering substance.

00:21:21.080 So they change the way they feel.

00:21:23.720 So when someone takes Prozac, for example, you know you're taking Prozac.

00:21:28.400 A lot of people say, I feel different.

00:21:29.920 Some people feel disconnected.

00:21:31.400 Some people feel completely numbed out.

00:21:33.400 In my opinion, that is not the path.

00:21:36.360 Towards overcoming what you're going through.

00:21:38.540 But for, you know, people who are looking for kind of a quick fix or some relief from what they're going through,

00:21:43.740 I can understand that that could be interpreted, at least in the short term, as it's helping them.

00:21:49.560 I think the majority of that's a placebo response.

00:21:51.660 We call it an active placebo response because you know that you're taking the substance.

00:21:56.060 Even then, there's not that much of a difference between the drug group and the placebo group.

00:22:02.040 So for those young people, probably mostly, I'm guessing young men that you saw like in the 90s in the hospital who were basically just numbed.

00:22:24.040 What you were describing actually reminds me a lot of what they thought or actually kind of what lobotomies did accomplish and what they thought lobotomies could accomplish.

00:22:32.720 Just kind of like taking out part of your brain, injuring part of your brain so that you're no longer really functioning at all.

00:22:39.600 And so it kind of seems like in a way that's what was happening or what is happening to a lot of these young, maybe aggressive, maybe they would say, I don't know if they would say psychotic young people.

00:22:51.360 Is that, okay, taking away their brain function entirely is preferable to the harmful behavior that they are doing right now.

00:23:02.080 So you said it could be a quote unquote, maybe quick fix if your goal is just kind of short term numbing.

00:23:09.700 So like in those kinds of situations where it seems like harm is imminent either to themselves or other people.

00:23:15.900 I mean, how do you navigate that without those quick fixes?

00:23:19.740 Yeah, this is a great question because when I say quick fix, it is short term.

00:23:23.940 Yeah.

00:23:24.320 Because our body is constantly seeking homeostasis.

00:23:27.760 So it adapts.

00:23:29.100 So that idea of like staying lethargic is only going to be for a period of time until you require more and more drugs or you add on another drug or you add on another drug.

00:23:39.520 And now you're really experimenting with a developing brain.

00:23:44.780 And it's interesting because when you look at, and this is clear, when you look at the data, the FDA has also provided this warning.

00:23:54.340 For people under 25, just one SSRI can more than double the risk of a suicide event.

00:24:01.360 When you go to the drug websites, they very clearly state that this drug can induce violence, self-harm or suicidality.

00:24:09.920 So we have this notion that if we take this drug, it can numb some people out and that could decrease the likelihood that they act out aggressively.

00:24:19.320 And that could be some benefit to us.

00:24:22.260 But the truth of the matter is everyone responds differently.

00:24:25.240 I had a gentleman on my podcast, 40 years old, and this is where these drugs are prescribed outside the bounds of what they've ever really been studied to do.

00:24:33.540 He was going through a very difficult time, a loss of a job, work-related stress.

00:24:38.680 He had a young family.

00:24:40.200 No history of any mental health issues.

00:24:42.740 So he goes to his primary care physician, says, Doc, I'm having trouble sleeping.

00:24:49.740 And so they give him a, I believe it was either Zoloft or Paxil.

00:24:54.780 They give him a subscription for, hey, this is going to help you with your own anxiety.

00:24:59.980 And what ended up happening is he began to develop psychotic beliefs that his own son was going to harm a bunch of people and he needed to protect society and kill his young son. 0.68

00:25:15.820 Wow. 0.92

00:25:16.420 And he did.

00:25:17.460 And it turns out he had, he's one of about 10% of the population approximately who cannot metabolize these drugs due to a genetic variant of a metabolizing gene.

00:25:32.080 So he, he was able to, through a lot of medical examination and testimony, he was able to, his sentence was actually decreased and now he's a promoter and he talks about his story and has a website called Know Your Drugs.

00:25:54.040 So, I mean, his purpose and his mission right now is to communicate to the general public that these drugs do induce violence and have negative adverse reactions in a percentage of, of people.

00:26:06.240 And when you, when you look into the science around this, it looks like we could probably identify those who could have that specific genetic variant of a metabolizing gene through, through gene testing.

00:26:20.760 But we don't do that.

00:26:21.900 We don't do that in the United States.

00:26:23.240 And really the, the doctors who are out there who are prescribing these drugs are doing two things.

00:26:27.900 They're very much overvaluing the, any type of effect that these drugs are going to have on mental health and they're minimizing harm.

00:26:35.420 And why are they minimizing harm?

00:26:37.320 Because so much of the information that is provided is directly from the pharmaceutical companies and the pharmaceutical salespeople are brilliant.

00:26:48.260 It's the marketing programs and they're, you know, they're in our doctor's offices and the allopathic medical establishment within the United States, which is drugs is healthcare.

00:26:57.760 It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a system that kind of maintains that this, this simplified way of viewing our mental health and this story or this fantasy that we have drugs that can cure people.

00:27:11.000 To put it in kind of my terms for anyone who is in like the communications world.

00:27:28.000 If you want to know about a person, really their history and what they're about, you don't read the press release that was written by their publicist because that can tell you some of the great parts about them.

00:27:38.200 It might even lie a little bit or twist the truth or kind of try to exaggerate or amplify the good things they've done.

00:27:44.580 But you won't really learn about the person.

00:27:46.840 You won't really know anything about the person.

00:27:48.500 You'll just know about their accomplishments. 0.95

00:27:50.500 That's how silly it is.

00:27:51.760 Like if you're writing a biography about someone or you're, I don't know, trying to place someone in a job, you're not going to just read their press release. 0.68

00:27:59.240 But we are prescribing, you're saying these medications, basically just reading the marketing and sales materials for them without really looking at the potential side effects.

00:28:08.860 So true. And I think it goes even a little bit deeper because as I mentioned, I just published a podcast episode today, the Radically Genuine Podcast, where I was reviewing the American Academy of Pediatric Guidelines that are promoting drugs as frontline health care for young people who are experiencing mood related problems.

00:28:29.900 And I was appalled by the entire publication because it was cherry picking science.

00:28:35.940 I've spent the last five, six, seven years going through all this various research.

00:28:41.160 And when we look at science, we have to look at the totality of all the research.

00:28:45.000 And they really cherry picked only a few studies to suggest that these drugs are safe and effective and they help more people than they harm.

00:28:54.120 And when you're talking about pediatricians or primary care physicians, this is not their area of specialty.

00:28:59.400 They are not trained to assess, understand, diagnose and treat mental health conditions.

00:29:04.500 In fact, the average amount of time for a primary care appointment in the United States is no more than eight minutes.

00:29:11.760 We have a health care system that's kind of fast food mentality.

00:29:15.280 It's like on an assembly line.

00:29:16.820 So they're pushing everybody, everyone through and they're handing out these checklists.

00:29:21.760 One thing that is really, really important that and this is new, this is new in my area.

00:29:26.780 But in our primary care centers and pediatric centers, they're giving depression screening measures.

00:29:31.940 These depression screening measures are really poor assessors of what actually clinical depression would look like.

00:29:41.400 It's like this really quick 10 questions.

00:29:44.660 That number of the questions can be applied to anyone at any given time.

00:29:50.260 Like I guarantee you if you're a young mother and you're a bit sleep deprived and you're dealing the stress of multiple kids in a career, that a number of the questions on there would just be considered normal.

00:30:01.260 Right?

00:30:01.800 Like sleep or the challenges or the anxiety or things that they're just normal.

00:30:05.760 They're normal part of living.

00:30:06.780 And that's what's happening.

00:30:07.580 We're trying to medicalize normal.

00:30:09.320 And if we restrict the idea of what normal is, then they can increase their customer base.

00:30:16.380 And what's really nefarious is I think that's happening with young people.

00:30:20.060 And young people cannot consent. 0.98

00:30:21.860 The adults in their lives and the parents consent for them.

00:30:25.320 And so parents, they've been trained in this United States medical culture, right?

00:30:32.680 The medical authority, we trust them that they have our best interest in mind.

00:30:36.120 And I think if anything that we've learned from COVID is that there needs to be an awakening for all of us to understand that what's happening in our health care centers is not always the best available evidence.

00:30:48.380 That a lot of it is bias.

00:30:50.840 It's ideology.

00:30:52.000 It's industry driven.

00:30:54.440 And I don't want to be an investigative reporter, but I had to see who is funding the American Academy of Pediatrics.

00:31:02.060 Who do you think is funding the American Academy of Pediatrics?

00:31:04.360 The pharmaceutical company.

00:31:05.740 The pharmaceutical, biotech, big food.

00:31:09.180 I mean, because that's another thing.

00:31:10.260 You know, you processed horrible food, 60% obesity rating, United States.

00:31:14.680 So people feel horrible.

00:31:16.740 But it's about solving the problem.

00:31:19.020 If you're going to be in health care or mental health care, you cannot take away our physical and mental health there.

00:31:23.900 They all exist together.

00:31:24.800 And so if you feel sick or you're on your screens all the time, you're isolated, you're going to feel bad.

00:31:31.580 Is the problem a chemical imbalance that no one can test for and no one can measure and we don't have any science to support it?

00:31:38.660 Or are the real problems the hard work that you're actually going to have to do in order to change?

00:31:43.360 All right.

00:31:47.960 That was part one.

00:31:48.920 Part two will be out tomorrow.

00:31:50.760 I will ask him, what do people mean when they say that there is a chemical imbalance?

00:31:56.220 And who is pushing this idea?

00:31:59.720 What's going into the so-called research behind prescribing these medications that are actually causing a lot of harm?

00:32:08.500 Who is funding this research?

00:32:11.820 He is going to be uncovering a lot of just mind-blowing corruption on tomorrow's episode and part two of our conversation.

00:32:21.120 So make sure you stay tuned for that.

00:32:24.300 And also he's going to deliver some really good solutions to these problems for us as well.

00:32:28.360 So you will feel empowered and educated by the end of the episode.

00:32:33.060 All right.

00:32:33.400 We will see you guys back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 13, 2023

Ep 821 ｜ Why Antidepressants Don’t Fix Depression ｜ Guest： Dr. Roger McFillin

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