Ep. 64 - We're All Mentally Disordered
Episode Stats
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143.92543
Summary
We have not only turned childhood into a mental disorder, but we have in fact turned the human condition into a mental disorder. We have turned humanity, just the very state of being a human being, has now turned into a Mental Disorder.
Transcript
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So I wrote an article a few weeks ago titled, We Have Turned Childhood Into a Mental Disorder.
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And I've been wanting to do a show on the topic, and I thought now is as good a time as any,
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especially because the main reason I wanted to visit this topic again is because the mistake I made when I wrote that article
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is that I think I was being too limited in my scope.
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The truth is that we've not only turned childhood into a mental disorder,
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we have in fact turned the human condition into a mental disorder.
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We have turned humanity, just the very state of being a human being, has now turned into a mental disorder, I would argue.
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There are about 300 mental disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM,
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And according to a report published on the National Institute of Health website in 2005,
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about half of the population, half of the population will qualify for a mental illness at some point in their lives,
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How can you even call it a disorder if half of the population has it?
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It would be like if half of the population had three arms, let's say.
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It would be very hard to determine that having three arms is a disorder or a mutation,
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because it's kind of like, well, you got one half with that,
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How do you know which half is the disordered one, I guess, is the question.
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The psychiatric industry, though, has basically set out to catalog and medicalize
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every human behavior, emotion, inclination, temptation, and personality trait.
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And it would seem that we're reaching a point where nobody in America can be considered normal.
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And you really have to wonder, actually, where do the drug companies and the psychiatrists,
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where do they get their idea for what is normal?
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Because they're talking all the time about, well, that's abnormal, that's disordered.
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Because it seems like you, being the drug companies, the psychiatrists, doctors,
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you very rarely come across anything you consider normal.
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Everyone that comes to you apparently is abnormal.
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So where are the normal people, is the question.
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And, you know, as we look at this mysterious rise in mental illnesses across America,
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you know, we're always told about the mental health epidemic.
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There's, and we look at the fact that mental illnesses used to be incredibly rare,
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And we look at the fact that drug companies have so far gotten almost 20% of the population
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And when you look at all those factors, I think you really have to start to wonder about
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the chicken or the egg, because we could say that, well, yeah, all these people mysteriously
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are coming up with mental disorders, and so that's why they're all on these drugs.
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But many of these drugs cause suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression.
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Meanwhile, a lot of Americans are having suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression.
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Before you had millions of Americans being put on these psychiatric drugs, you did not
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have an epidemic of suicide, depression, anxiety.
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And it just so happens that these drugs they're putting everybody on cause those things.
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Again, it's, you know, it's enough to make you pause and just think for a minute, isn't
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It seems like most people, we just go along with it.
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Now, I focus very often on children when it comes to this issue, because I think nowhere
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is the tendency to medicalize the human condition more apparent or more dangerous than with children.
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I mean, we're putting kids on these drugs, and they're staying on them for their entire lives.
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As most people know, there's been an astronomical rise in ADHD diagnoses over the last several
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And now somewhere around 10% of all children in the country have been labeled with this
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And the label is being stuck on kids at earlier and earlier ages.
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And we're now told that kids as young as three years old, three years old can be diagnosed with
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There are new medical guidelines recommend that psychiatric drugs for kids can start at four
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years old if their, quote, symptoms are, quote, debilitating.
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Uh, and a third of all kids with ADHD are diagnosed before the age of six.
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And again, when they put you on these drugs, there's very good chance you're going to be
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It also just so happens that, um, there's a very high likelihood that somebody who is diagnosed
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officially with ADHD as a child will develop later on other mental disorders.
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And it just so happens that these drugs they're putting the kids on can cause those other problems
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When you have someone who's easily distracted at the age of four and you put them on drugs
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and then at the age of 16 or 18, now they have debilitating depression.
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Is it possible that the drugs you've been, you've been, you've been, you've been the chemicals
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that you've been sending into their brain, the drugs that you've had them on, uh, for
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the last 10 years could have something to do with that?
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Um, of course, doctors will assure parents that the drugs are safe and will cause no long
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But at best, at best, we don't know whether or not that's actually true.
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So that is, when doctors are saying that they're lying, they cannot just, they will declare
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Oh yeah, that won't cause any problems down the line.
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There's plenty of reason to believe that these drugs are altering your child's brain in ways
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that they will feel for years to come, possibly their entire lives.
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Now, I don't want to focus this whole time on ADHD and I've done, you know, I've written
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and done shows on ADHD before, but, but I think, uh, we can't overlook ADHD because that's
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And I think it's a, I think it's a catalyst for a lot of the other problems down the line.
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So we should ask on what basis do we take this incredible step as a society to drug into
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oblivion, what used to be considered completely common and normal and even charming childhood
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After all, any experienced parent will, can look at a list of ADHD symptoms and, and see
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that they are the most normal characteristics in the world.
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So here are a few symptoms, um, of ADHD in constant motion, squirms and fidgets, makes careless
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mistakes, often loses things, does not seem to listen, easily distracted, does not finish
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Now, honestly, I would be more concerned about a child who doesn't display those symptoms
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So, so how on earth can we take these normal childhood behaviors and decide that in certain
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cases they could be a manifestation of a mental illness?
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Well, the, the National Institute of Mental Health offers a clue about this.
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And this is what the National Institute of Mental Health said.
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People who have ADHD have combinations of these symptoms.
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Make careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities.
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Fail to not, fail to, um, to, to follow through on instructions.
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Fail to finish schoolwork, chores or duties in the workplace.
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Avoid or dislike tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as schoolwork or homework.
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Lose things necessary for tasks or activities, such as school supplies, pencils, books, tools,
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wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, and cell phones.
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In general, a child shouldn't receive a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder unless the core
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symptoms of ADHD start early in life, before age 12, and create significant problems at
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You notice the, the word that kept popping up there.
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School, according to the medical community, a child's personality becomes diseased at the
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precise moment that his personality interferes with his schooling.
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Because physical diseases aren't judged that way.
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As I've said in the past, if you go to the doctor because you think you have diabetes,
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But I guarantee you this, here's what he won't ask.
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He won't ask you, well, is the diabetes causing problems at home or at school?
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No, he's not going to ask that because it doesn't matter.
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If it's a, if it is, if you have an objective case of diabetes, it makes no difference whether
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or not it's causing problems for you in this or that environment.
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Diabetes is diabetes when you're alone in the forest.
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It doesn't matter what, you could be, you could be on a desert island all by yourself
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But ADHD is entirely different because if you're on a desert island by yourself, you
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don't have ADHD because it's not getting in the way of anything.
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If you're alone in the forest, you don't have ADHD because it's not getting in the way of
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But the moment that it becomes a nuisance, the moment that it gets in the way of something
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that you're doing, especially school, now it becomes a disorder.
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So the disorder is subjective, environmental, contextual.
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Is it not possible that our perception is just wrong?
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Is it not possible further, possibly, that the environment itself is disordered?
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If a school cannot function without putting hundreds of its students on psychiatric medication,
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then should we not consider the possibility that the school environment is the disordered
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Should we not consider that maybe there is something about the way that we approach modern schooling
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that makes it so difficult or impossible for children with certain personalities to succeed?
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And if that's the case, then should we be changing the kids or should we be changing the school?
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Now, this diagnostic criteria is rather peculiar, especially because advocates for ADHD drugs will
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claim that the disorder can be located in the brain.
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And we hear this about many mental illnesses where we're told that, oh, you know, you do your
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If ADHD can be located in the brain, why is it diagnosed with a personality survey?
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They say the same thing for depression, every other mental illness.
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Yet, why don't they diagnose these mental illnesses with brain scans?
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If you're telling me that, oh, it's clearly in the brain, well, then why aren't we looking
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at the brain before we tell somebody that they have this disorder?
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But I have never heard of anyone being diagnosed with ADHD or depression or what have you, and
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then the diagnosis being changed or overturned when somebody looks at a brain scan.
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You hear about somebody going to the doctor because they appear to have the symptoms of
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And then the doctor says, yeah, you might have it.
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So that happens all the time with other diseases.
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Because if these things can be found in the brain, then there should be people who think
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we say, if there are neurological differences in your brain, then it proves that you have
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But if there aren't any neurological differences, you still have the mental illness.
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If you have the brain differences, then you see, it proves it.
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If you don't have it, yeah, well, you still have it.
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Look, I admit to you, I'm not a scientist, all right?
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But how is that consistent with the scientific process?
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It's like if a doctor called you up and said, well, the AIDS test came back negative.
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Now, it may be true, and I admit it may be true, that you can find certain neurological
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similarities among certain people who have been diagnosed with ADHD or depression or any
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You could line up a bunch of, quote, ADHD brains and see certain things going on that
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are similar among many of the brains, all right?
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You can also find neurological similarities among people with similar personalities and
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If you were to take a bunch of people who are very inclined to be enthusiastic, like my
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wife, for instance, who's a very enthusiastic person, and if you were to look at her brain
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and look at the brains of a bunch of other enthusiastic people, you'd probably find things
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You'd find the same thing among optimists and among pessimists.
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You know, they say that there's a, for lack of a better term, there is an optimistic brain
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But that doesn't prove that these similarities cause optimism or pessimism or enthusiasm or
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You could also look at the brain scan of a man who's grieving his dead wife, and you could
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You could also see his happiness if his child was just born.
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If, you know, a moment after his child is born, if you were to do a brain scan, you could
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You could even see the kind of calm joy that he finds in prayer reflected in his brain.
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But that doesn't prove that the chemical reactions in his brain are causing the grief, the joy,
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You see, just because you find it, and just because you find potentially some kind of a
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correlation, that doesn't prove that the one causes the other.
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And of course, I'm being very generous by even accepting this idea of brain differences.
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After all, people are still told to this day that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance.
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And drug companies still sell drugs based on that idea.
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You know, drug companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars selling drugs that are
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The drug companies know, and the doctors know, that this imbalance does not exist.
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It was a theory concocted by psychiatrists decades ago.
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And they've been trying for decades to prove it.
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Which explains why study after study have shown that antidepressants don't perform significantly
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And they especially don't perform better than active placebos.
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An active placebo that they would give you in a medical trial is a pill that doesn't do
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anything to treat whatever problem, but it does come with a certain side effect.
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So like, maybe it's a placebo that will cause dry mouth or something like that, or give you
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Um, and the reason why they give an active placebo is because then, you know, it can kind
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Once you, once you notice that you're having a side effect, well, then you're going to think
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So in other words, sometimes when they, when they, when they test a drug and then they, and
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then, and then they have the placebo, those trials are not always, um, reliable because
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it could be that the real drug is, is, is actually doing nothing, but it is causing some kind of
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physical side effect, which tricks a person into thinking that the drug is doing something.
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So, um, I think that could be why antidepressants historically perform not very well against placebo.
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Let me quote now a paper in the public library of science.
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To our knowledge, there is not a single peer reviewed article that can be accurately cited
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to directly support claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder.
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While there are many articles that present counter evidence yet again, they are putting millions
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of people on these drugs to treat a, a chemical imbalance that doesn't exist and that they know
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Like, I mean, it's incredible that, that we all just sit back and go along with this and
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doctors go along with it, putting people on these drugs that are, are going to do all kinds of things
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to their brain, but are not going to treat the actual chemical imbalance because it isn't there.
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Now here I think is the problem with, uh, our whole approach to mental illnesses.
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And, and, and, and this, by the way, I'm not talking about brain diseases, a brain disease
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like dementia, where you can see the, the, the brain literally atrophy.
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Now that's very different from a mental illness.
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Um, and if a mental illness were a brain disease, then we wouldn't call it a mental illness.
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In other words, if we could definitively see that this mental illness is caused by something
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going haywire in the brain, and we could see that there's a, that there's a real disease
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in the brain, then we would just call it a brain disease.
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Um, but we call them mental illnesses because they are, we say, diseases of the mind rather
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See, the thing is, in diagnosing the mind as distinct from the brain, a psychiatrist is
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now basically looking at the whole human person, okay, looking at how somebody feels, how they
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And from that deciding, based on entirely subjective criteria, that a person ought not be like that.
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Usually this is an easy process for, for a doctor.
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Um, a doctor can look at a liver or a kidney or even a brain and say, no, that's not supposed
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It's like, there's a certain organ or a certain, certain part of the body that is malfunctioning.
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And so you can look at that and you can see what the brain does during dementia.
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But with mental illnesses, we look at somebody prone to distraction or somebody who's in despair
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And, um, and doctors say, well, no, humans aren't supposed to have those mental experiences.
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Or if they do have them, they should have them only for X amount of time and to Y degree.
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How are you in authority on how people should think and act and feel?
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A child isn't supposed to be easily distracted.
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You could look at a child and say, he is easily distracted.
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But when you get to the, he shouldn't be part of it.
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In order to, now to look at a person's like, well, they aren't supposed to feel like that,
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In order to make a claim like that, and that is an incredible claim to make.
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But in order to make that claim, you must have some idea of like the ideal person.
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So if I'm looking at something and saying, well, it's not supposed to do that, I must
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So I can look at a computer, and if I knew about computers, which I don't, but if I were
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an expert on computers, and the computer was having a problem, I could say, no, that computer
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And the reason why I can say that is because I know what a computer is supposed to do, and
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I can take a normal computer and show you, oh, no, this is what a computer is supposed
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Here's the, you know, there's a disconnect here.
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But when you look at a person, and you say, they aren't supposed to be and feel like that,
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well, then what you have to be able to do is you have to be able to take a, quote, normal
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person and say, oh, no, that, you see that person there?
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Where is this normal standard for a person by which we are all being judged?
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Now, of course, if you take an entirely materialistic view of humanity, which most psychiatrists
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do, then you have to believe that everything a person feels, everything he thinks, all of
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his traits, his characteristics, his flaws, his sins, his desires, his goals, his love,
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his joy, his despair, and so on, are all just material phenomena.
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But if, on the other hand, you factor in the soul and free will and the uniqueness of each
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person created by a divine force, then it's clear that there's something deeper, okay?
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There is something called a soul, and that is what drives and animates a person.
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He said, I think it's really kind of a philosophical question at the root of this whole, well, there
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We have allowed the medical community and the drug companies, they have, in my opinion,
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they have gone way beyond medicine and science, and they have wandered into philosophy.
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And we are allowing them to tackle these really deep philosophical questions.
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Like when you say a person isn't supposed to be and feel like that, that is a philosophical
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And there's another question, too, and a philosophical question.
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If you say that we are nothing but flesh and bone, then I guess you would have to answer
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that what really drives and animates us is our brain chemistry.
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But if you're not a materialist, then you would say that what drives and animates us, the animating
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force within us is actually our soul or our mind.
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And again, it comes, you know, so for me, since I'm not a materialist, I would say that the soul
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Now, if you are a materialist, I don't even know what you mean when you say mind.
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But you get into, you say the word mental, mental illness, but all you believe in is,
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You can't even define what a mind is, yet you're diagnosing it.
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So I would say, and I think anyone who's not a materialist would have to say that
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your mind is your soul, you know, it's one and the same.
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So the point is, even if a chemical imbalancement could be found, and it hasn't been, but even if it
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were, there would still be a question about whether that imbalancement is a reflection or
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a symptom of the spiritual problem rather than itself being the cause of the problem.
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And even if you don't factor in the human soul, I mean, this is just, that's just one of the
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issues here, even if you don't factor that in, and even if you did prove this imbalancement
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theory, still, you wouldn't be able to prove that the imbalancement causes whatever disorder
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because you couldn't prove that the imbalancement isn't itself caused by, say, environmental factors
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or life experience or any number of other things.
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So again, there are these enormous leaps of logic that are being made when we talk about
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And we're just allowing the drug companies and doctors to make those leaps.
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But even if we were to put all this to the side, even if you were to accept just for a moment that brain
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chemistry determines everything about a person, and even if we were to accept that there is this
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chemical imbalancement, and the chemical imbalancement itself does cause, say, ADHD or depression or
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whatever, that still wouldn't prove that a particular personality, like the ADHD personality, for
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It doesn't prove, in other words, that a person shouldn't be that way.
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We've decided that kids aren't supposed to be that way.
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We've decreed it from on high like gods, and then we've set out to chemically eliminate
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every human disposition that we find inconvenient or difficult, but that is subjective.
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We look at unfavorable characteristics, emotions, and personalities, and we decide that because
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they are unfavorable, they must therefore be medical.
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So we may say, for instance, that somebody has an anxiety disorder.
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Okay, but who's to say that they shouldn't have anxiety?
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Or are you saying that there shouldn't be any anxiety at all?
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And no, I don't think that a person should live consumed by anxiety.
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But neither do I think that anxiety is necessarily a medical condition.
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And I also think that it hasn't been proven to be a medical condition.
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It has rather been decided philosophically that it must be a medical condition.
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You know, I think it's possible, not just possible, but I think there are, you know, there are many problems that a person can have.
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That doesn't mean that the problems are medical.
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You know, just, there's any number of other things that could be happening to cause problems for a person.
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But what we've done is we have eliminated all of those possibilities, and now everything has to just be medical and physical.
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I'm not saying that mental illnesses don't exist.
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I'm saying that there are many questions we aren't asking, and we should be.
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I'm also saying that when analyzing a person's emotional and mental issues, we can't completely disregard things like free will, choice, environment, experience, and the soul.
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Yet that is exactly what we've done with mental illness.
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And we've done so on the word of drug companies and psychiatrists who themselves are still pushing debunked theories to explain the problems that they're supposed to be treating.
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And maybe these are questions we should think about and try to answer before we continue along this path of turning everything and everyone into a mental disorder.