In this episode, we get to know Dr. Naomi Best, who has done excellent work over the years exposing the leftist takeover of our psychiatric institutions here in the United States. In this interview we get into the Minneapolis church shooter, SSRIs, and the trans ideology broadly.
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00:00:30.000It seems like we could potentially get to a point where these prescriptions will be able to be filed online.
00:00:35.140I mean, it certainly seems like there's trending in that direction.
00:00:38.920Oh yeah, you can. Right now, their companies exist where you see, like remember when you could get like a medical card for marijuana online by seeing it?
00:00:50.600Yeah, now the services for these SSRI prescriptions, you go and have a 10-minute phone appointment with somebody and say you have anxiety and get this prescription.
00:01:00.000And a shocking percentage of women are now on these drugs in particular.
00:01:05.840Hello everyone, this is Tate Brown here holding it down for Tim Poole.
00:01:09.400We have a great interview here with Naomi Best who has done excellent work over the years exposing the leftist takeover of our psychiatric institutions here in the United States.
00:01:17.980In this interview, we get into the Minneapolis church shooter, we get into SSRIs, we get into the trans ideology broadly speaking.
00:01:27.960Anyway, RFK Jr., quote, we are launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs, some of the other psychotic drugs that might be contributing to violence.
00:01:38.240So with that, we're going to get into our interview with Naomi Best.
00:01:48.200I just want to say before we get started, I mean, a lot of people probably know who you are, but maybe you could give a quick introduction for the viewers that don't.
00:01:54.200Yeah, sure. So I am a former marriage and family therapy student at Santa Clara University, and I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the ideological coercion that I experienced in that program.
00:02:09.580The whole field of therapy and psychology generally now, it has been captured by a critical theory.
00:02:17.920So, you know, you could describe that as critical social justice.
00:02:22.180I'm sure your audience is very familiar with it.
00:02:25.280But essentially, every class, every topic we discussed was in that frame.
00:02:32.800So, yeah, when I it really came to a head with the the sexual issues.
00:02:39.280So I was in a course called Human Sexuality, and I was just very disturbed by the sexual ethic and also the notions about transgender care for youth in that class.
00:02:53.980So when I published my Wall Street Journal article, I actually got fired from my therapy internship.
00:03:00.440And, you know, the director of the site actually said, you know, you're really smart.
00:03:06.680I think you'd be a great therapist, really compassionate.
00:03:09.920But the junior therapists at that organization made there was such an uprising against me that it was not tenable for me to work at the organization.
00:03:23.180And I think that just goes to show how close minded, how narrow minded the field has become, which is not going to bode well for people who need mental health care in this country.
00:03:36.480I mean, I think the one thing that seems to be preeminent above anything else as far as like the rhetoric coming specifically from the left after the shooting is there's no introspection whatsoever on how we could be handling these types of people with these types of afflictions.
00:03:51.720There's there's there's just a doubling down every single time.
00:03:54.260And I'm just assuming you probably saw a lot of this when you were when you were doing your work.
00:04:00.580Yeah. I mean, when I'm thinking about the shooting and, you know, I'm still processing all of this.
00:04:08.720But in my program, there was a persistent anti-Christian sentiment, especially in the sexuality class.
00:04:18.580You know, we were we were asked to discuss how the Christian you know, they called it the Judeo-Christian ethic, the biblical reality.
00:04:28.080I would call it that we're there were made male and female has oppressed us in some way and how we would act as agents of change to dismantle that binary.
00:04:40.180One one one method they they advocated for.
00:04:47.560Yeah, was they advocated for something called gender fucking, which essentially is is disrupting the binary on purpose.
00:05:00.140So a man wearing a dress with a beard or, you know, it wasn't in the in the traditional understanding of gender dysphoria.
00:05:10.100Somebody who truly believes they're the opposite sex and wants to live as the opposite sex, blend in, operate as a normal person.
00:05:17.860And it was more of a social activist stance.
00:05:21.780And unfortunately, that is how I was taught to become a therapist as well.
00:05:30.760You know, I actually got some pushback in that class for raising questions about transgender care for youth.
00:05:39.540I was asked to stop talking so much because, you know, I said that I wasn't comfortable providing these recommendations for for children to go be put on puberty blockers or hormones.
00:05:54.680But the the message was don't be a gatekeeper, because if you are a gatekeeper, you are acting from a place of privilege and you are further oppressing this disenfranchised, marginalized group.
00:06:12.220And there is a lot of emotional manipulation that happens, because when you enter a therapy program, people enter therapy programs to help to be compassionate.
00:06:24.080And there is now a generation of therapists who are being taught that the way you the only way you are compassionate for these children is to affirm.
00:06:34.860And that comes down from every professional organization in the field right now.
00:06:39.540Yeah, I mean, we covered it earlier in the show is we saw that Robert Westman changing his name to Robin and we saw the paperwork filed and he was a minor at the time.
00:06:51.360So that means that his mother signed off of it.
00:06:53.020And presumably within this transition transgender process, there would obviously be medical professionals involved.
00:07:00.440And I've seen some discussion, some dialogue online that Minnesota specifically is a haven for sort of these activists, therapists, I guess, that you're referring to.
00:07:11.820I mean, do you have any insight specifically in Minnesota or maybe how blue states are handling these issues?
00:07:16.980Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I can speak blue states more broadly.
00:07:21.360I know that Governor Tim Walz signed a sort of safe haven executive order for his state in 2023.
00:08:05.720They call it conversion therapy, which is so ironic, right, because this child or this, you know, youth, adolescent, whatever it may be, is is transitioning to become the other gender.
00:08:17.020But saying, hey, you know, let's figure out how you can live comfortably within your within your biological sex is considered conversion.
00:08:27.360And, you know, it was just so disturbing.
00:08:38.560So in this lecture about transgender medicine in my in my course, it was a transgender woman who was giving the presentation.
00:08:48.640And, you know, she was saying that therapists act as sort of guides, they act not as medical professionals, but the lecture was framed as the transgender person is sort of going on this hero's journey.
00:09:07.920And the therapist would be a guide, but also these online communities are actively encouraged by the mental health professionals to sort of find a safe haven for these these kids who may feel isolated, especially in cases where the parents aren't affirming.
00:09:30.320So they're being pushed into these echo chambers of activists.
00:09:36.840And I am just so concerned about the way that parents are both guilted.
00:09:43.880You know, we've we've all heard the anecdote.
00:09:46.280If you do you want a trans daughter or a dead son, but they're also just being excluded from the conversation and, you know, not preemptively telling a client's parent that their child is claiming a transgender identity is just par for the course.
00:10:08.340So I'm really concerned that people who advocate for more mental health services in the face of the gun control debate don't quite understand that the mental health industry is acting or is part of the pipeline of the medicalization of transgender youth.
00:10:29.700Totally. I mean, yeah, we're seeing as more information comes out along all the ways that we could have prevented this Robert Westman person from doing such a thing.
00:10:39.980It seems like there was multiple stopgaps that failed.
00:11:04.600And anecdotally, they've had a lot of success, but they're sort of operating outside the bounds of the professional organizations, the professional guidance.
00:11:15.260Yeah, I mean, the instance of comorbid mental health diagnoses for adolescents claiming a transgender ideology is just extremely high.
00:11:26.520It's four times that of the rate of somebody who doesn't identify as a transgender person.
00:11:34.640So I'm not, as it stands right now, we are between a rock and a hard place because these people who have mood disorders, a lot of the times it's bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum, you know, neurodevelopmental disorders.
00:11:54.980They need real treatment, especially I'm concerned in the case of bipolar because, you know, one of the hallmarks of a manic episode is this rash decision making and also, you know, feelings of spiritual awakening, like finding one's true self.
00:12:15.140You know, I've spoken also to the transitioners who have autism spectrum disorder, and they said that their lack of social skills made them feel as though, you know, I'm not fitting in with the boys my age.
00:12:34.220I'm not acting like them, perhaps I'm not acting like them, perhaps I can learn how to be a girl and apply those, those social skills in that area.
00:12:45.740So, you know, as it stands, I don't know, I think that parents really need to interview any prospective therapist that they're going to bring their child to.
00:12:56.180Gone are the days of neutral mental health professionals that you can trust with your child in a private space for an hour every week.
00:13:08.760A therapist needs to involve the parent at every step of the treatment and having real open lines of communication between child, parent and therapist is going to be crucial.
00:13:21.800And if there's any pushback from the therapist about, you know, the importance of the confidential relationship between child and therapist, I would say, you know, that's not, that's not a deal breaker, but it is a red flag.
00:13:36.520Like, yeah, I'm sort of out of, I'm sort of at a loss with the field and I've, it actually ended my career as a marriage and family therapist.
00:13:47.780I was pushed out because I refused to go along with this ideology.
00:13:55.600If Robert Westman was, was in your office, I mean, what would, what would the Christian approach be to someone with these afflictions?
00:14:03.600Yeah, gosh, I won't pretend to know how to treat somebody with these violent, um, urges.
00:14:11.900I think with, with the transgender ideation, um, a deep understanding about the, the dissociation between oneself and one's body.
00:14:24.480I think that affirmative piece is really important because if somebody is saying that they're the opposite sex, they are in a tremendous amount of pain and disconnection from their own body.
00:14:36.240And I am a bit disturbed and disheartened, um, hearing the discourse on the, the anti-transition side, the gender critical side, because, um, there, every person is made in the image of God and deserves dignity.
00:14:56.700And I, I, I went into therapy because I deserve the, I believe that they deserve somebody to walk with them through their pain.
00:15:04.220Um, but lying to somebody about the possibility of them actually becoming the opposite sex in my view is not compassionate whatsoever, um, and can lead them down a path of more confusion, more dissociation from their body.
00:15:21.740Um, you know, I think it's unique for children too, because adults who transition, I think they have a better understanding that you can act, you can't achieve becoming the opposite sex.
00:15:37.680You can live life approaching something similar to the opposite sex.
00:15:43.200Um, I don't think many of these children who are being put on puberty blockers can conceptualize that it is an impossibility.
00:15:52.500Um, and, you know, so W path, I'll, I'll mention this just for some statistics, W path, um, is the, the thought leaders in this area and the, the psychological associations reference W path, W path references the psychological associations.
00:16:11.860It's an issue, um, it's an issue, um, but they don't even recommend any age restriction on puberty blockers.
00:16:19.580They say, um, you can start at Tanner stage two, which is when breast buds are first forming.
00:16:26.580Um, so this is around age eight and they, you know, they also recommend, okay, the, the child has been socially transitioned for a period before they go on puberty blockers.
00:16:42.080We're talking about age seven, age six at Santa Clara university, where I went, the school is placing, um, students, therapy students at an organization, a County center where they are doing trans affirmative therapy for children as young as five years old.
00:17:21.440Well, I mean, and what you're kind of hitting on and you did touch on it earlier, um, with the sort of rhetorical approach from the anti-trans crowd.
00:17:29.460Um, I do get this sense of exasperation because on the conservative side, we've heard about the transgender issue for so long.
00:17:37.360We all know that, you know, the narratives, et cetera, et cetera.
00:17:40.560And I mean, for the record, I think they're accurate.
00:17:42.840Um, so I think we are growing, we're getting to a point of sort of impatience on the right, because like you mentioned, it appears to be top down.
00:17:50.580There is a sense of helplessness because anyone that goes into the mental health field to try and rectify the situation just gets pushed out.
00:17:56.960Um, so there does seem, seem to be this growing exasperation with the LGBT movement, broadly speaking.
00:18:04.660Um, so, I mean, I'm sure you've, you've seen a bit of that in your field, but I mean, I don't know.
00:18:10.080It does feel like, um, I don't know, maybe things, things are getting a bit, I don't know if desperate is the right word, but we're, we're looking for more potentially, um, more potentially large and wide spanning solutions for the issue.
00:18:24.400Yeah, I think at this point we have hit a tipping point, um, in the culture.
00:18:32.460I, I think that at first when the transgender issue was happening and it was such rare cases, especially with children.
00:18:40.740Um, and you know, there was a feeling like, okay, we want to be compassionate towards these children, but it seems that we've run the experiment and seen the rapid explosion of this affliction in kids to the point where parents, especially.
00:18:57.640Um, are going to start being protective, um, are going to start being protective, um, of children.
00:19:01.940So I actually am hopeful that there will be some positive change soon, um, pumping the brakes, but in the, you know, these fields and bureaucracy, they move so slowly.
00:19:15.700And we need more therapists, more medical professionals to start speaking out against this, um, and offering different treatment approaches, um, which, you know, which there are, there's networks of this rapid onset gender dysphoria, um, therapists who, who treat these kids.
00:19:33.240And like I said, they're, they're, they're having success.
00:19:36.340Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm, I, I am hopeful that this will be a short-lived experiment, uh, but I, I do understand the exasperation because it is gotten so extreme and the, um, the real world consequences are so dire.
00:19:56.340I mean, the, uh, the, the amount of kids that this has already happened to, um, that we've allowed this to happen to is unacceptable.
00:20:05.000And I think we'll go down as one of the greatest medical scandals, um, possibly ever, right.
00:20:12.080Because, you know, these are, these are mentally afflicted children, um, who deserved better.
00:20:20.720I mean, well, speaking from the institutional side, is there any sort of mechanisms that state governments can use to get the ball rolling in the right direction in these institutions?
00:20:31.900Or is this more of a, we're going to have to seek more like institutional recapture from, from the ground up?
00:20:38.080Um, you know, Trump's executive order with the gender ideology and federal agencies that, that might push the needle one way.
00:20:47.980But I think that in these blue states, I have a sense that the federal government is sort of abandoning them to their own devices.
00:20:57.180I mean, this, um, this clinic where they treat five-year-olds, that's the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Department.
00:21:04.860Um, so that's taxpayer money, but is Gavin Newsom going to sign a bill, you know, banning this treatment for, for trans care?
00:21:48.860Um, and there, you know, there's lots of right wing, not even right wing, but just like right leaning cultural right of San Francisco folks in California who just don't know that therapists have been, um, so ideologically captured by this.
00:22:05.500So race awareness is for sure going to be the first, um, the, the first strategy.
00:22:11.940I also think that there is a, there's an impulse to outsource your child's mental healthcare to a professional, but I truly believe that your child's mental health, um, it has to start with you.
00:22:28.420It has to start with getting them off screens, getting them exercise, getting them upper nutrition, um, getting them quality time with family.
00:22:37.580I know this is all easier said than done.
00:22:40.840My child is two, um, but yeah, just sending them to a therapist.
00:22:50.060I mean, and that's, I mean, it needs to be reframed that way that there's, I mean, the amount of response you get this sense now where the parents, parents, even in our side of the spectrum, so to speak.
00:22:58.900Um, are trying to outsource their children's upbringing to something, whether it be a device, whether it be the schools, whether it even be their churches.
00:23:05.900Sometimes it's like the home ultimately is where the buck stops.
00:23:10.580Um, I, there's another question I want to ask you.
00:23:12.640It's kind of back to the, to the shooting situation.
00:23:15.640Um, can you maybe expand or potentially, uh, I don't know if speculates the correct word, but maybe explain, um, the medications that someone like this would be on that could potentially impair their, impair their,
00:23:28.400whether they're thinking, cause a lot of people are speculating RFK actually 30 minutes before cities and get to start investigating SSRIs.
00:23:34.520It's a potential trigger for these sorts of, um, things, these actions.
00:23:38.420I don't know, as an expert, I mean, what, what impact did these medications have on, on these people?
00:23:44.000Yeah, well, we know it's very well documented that when SSRIs are prescribed to young people in particular, it can increase suicidal ideation as well as aggression.
00:23:57.360That's not, um, debated, that's on the black, that's on, that's on the label.
00:24:03.760Um, so there's also been concurrently a push for general practitioners to be just prescribing SSRIs as a first line of treatment for anxiety and depression.
00:24:17.600Wow. Um, yeah. So now you can go to a general practitioner, have, I don't know when the last time you went to a doctor is, but generally they're like 15 minute appointments.
00:24:28.200They will, um, you can write a, uh, a questionnaire or fill out a questionnaire.
00:24:36.340And, you know, if you meet a certain criteria of depressive symptoms, you can get, walk away with a prescription.
00:24:42.500Um, you know, I don't know if this person was on any psychotropic medication, um, it's probably likely, um, and, you know, I'm not going to draw the, the correlation between SSRIs and mass shootings.
00:25:19.580You can, um, right now their companies exist where you see, like, remember when, remember when you could get like a medical card for marijuana online.
00:25:31.560Now there's no services for these SSRI prescriptions.
00:25:34.860You go and have a 10 minute phone appointment with somebody and say, you have anxiety and get this prescription.
00:25:39.980Um, and a, a shocking percentage of, of women are now on these drugs in particular women.
00:25:48.160Um, but yeah, for, for children, it, it just, it should not be a first line treatment.
00:25:57.040It should not, which, I mean, I've, I've spent, I talked about on the show yesterday when I, when I went live yesterday, there was virtually zero information on the shooting beyond the, you know, we, we had a general idea of the loss of life.
00:26:10.180Um, and I had said that I think the biggest, what you're noticing in America, you notice this palpable instability.
00:26:16.460You're feeling it off of people, you're, you're sensing off of people, a sense of instability and that people are just snapping.
00:26:22.920And also you're sensing this deep void inside of people that they're, they're searching for, for something.
00:26:28.820Um, personally, I think that's Christ.
00:26:31.220Um, and it seems like these SSRIs are able to effectively zombify them where they don't even have to think about these things.
00:26:38.740I mean, I know that's a bit, you know, you know, hardcore, but maybe you can expand a little bit on what these drugs specifically do to people.
00:26:48.640Well, um, so they're, they're serotonin, um, reuptake inhibitors.
00:26:54.400So essentially they allow more serotonin to float around in your brain.
00:26:58.360That used to be, um, it, the theory used to be that there was a lack of serotonin for people who were depressed that turned out to be completely bunk.
00:27:06.640Um, so the exact mechanism is how these drugs treat depression is sort of unknown.
00:27:14.880Um, and there's also just very shaky evidence that they, um, work for moderate depression.
00:27:23.100Um, so I think that we don't quite know what we're doing with the drugs.
00:27:31.020Um, and that is especially concerning for people who are underage, um, who get on these drugs that have, uh, while their brain is still developing, it is extremely difficult to get off of these drugs.
00:27:46.240There's all sorts of, um, quasi withdrawal symptoms.
00:27:52.220So that's a feeling like your brain, it's sort of like an electro, like electrostatic in your brain, um, feelings of depression, feelings of meaninglessness, um, jitteriness.
00:28:06.200It's, it's a, um, it's a long-term medication and it's not meant to be, um, something that you get off of.
00:28:14.060Um, so yeah, I mean, I think that again, it's coming down to a cultural problem with such lack of meaning, like you said, maybe it's God.
00:28:28.120Um, and the SSRIs are sort of numbing that feeling of meaninglessness that's happening, but our current culture is certainly not conducive to positive mental health.
00:28:47.940No, we are, we are running out of time.
00:28:50.040There's, I have so many questions on this kind of stuff.
00:28:52.240Like it's, it's just, it's fat and it's something people don't really think about as much, but it's something that's has such a massive role in people's lives, especially with the SSRIs and stuff.
00:29:00.920But I mean, you talk about it all the time.
00:29:02.860Where, where can people find you to get more?
00:29:29.600I mean, you know, there's obviously a lot of, um, there's a lot of people speculating, a lot of policies proposed on Twitter, these sorts of things, which a lot of them, you know, are, would be conducive to success in a lot of cases.
00:29:44.100It's nice to get someone that can break down the nitty gritty, someone that can break down the mechanisms that are at work, at play.
00:29:51.300She was on a culture war, um, few, few, it was probably a few weeks.
00:29:55.180It was about a month and a half ago with, um, Dr. Drew and Dr. Chloe Carmichael.
00:29:59.620I would recommend taking a look at that where she really expands on, on the, um, the ideological capture, uh, within the, um, psychology world of psychiatry, psychology, et cetera, et cetera.
00:30:13.800Um, it's terrifying stuff and it's not really being talked about.
00:30:16.420It's not really being talked about enough.
00:30:17.960So it's really a relief to see RFK, um, that, that soundbite from RFK before we went live, um, about the contribution of SSRI drugs to violence.
00:30:27.200I think, uh, we need a deep dive on that.