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

00:00:00.000 So I wrote an article a few weeks ago titled, We Have Turned Childhood Into a Mental Disorder.

00:00:06.460 And I've been wanting to do a show on the topic, and I thought now is as good a time as any,

00:00:11.680 especially because the main reason I wanted to visit this topic again is because the mistake I made when I wrote that article

00:00:18.740 is that I think I was being too limited in my scope.

00:00:23.000 The truth is that we've not only turned childhood into a mental disorder,

00:00:27.660 we have in fact turned the human condition into a mental disorder.

00:00:31.600 We have turned humanity, just the very state of being a human being, has now turned into a mental disorder, I would argue.

00:00:41.360 There are about 300 mental disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM,

00:00:50.000 kind of the Bible of mental disorders.

00:00:53.040 And according to a report published on the National Institute of Health website in 2005,

00:00:57.520 about half of the population, half of the population will qualify for a mental illness at some point in their lives,

00:01:04.780 their lives by the standards of the DSM.

00:01:07.460 Okay, half of the population.

00:01:10.040 Now, here's an interesting logical question.

00:01:14.480 How can you even call it a disorder if half of the population has it?

00:01:20.840 It would be like if half of the population had three arms, let's say.

00:01:26.600 It would be very hard to determine that having three arms is a disorder or a mutation,

00:01:32.500 because it's kind of like, well, you got one half with that,

00:01:34.920 and the other.

00:01:35.260 How do you know which half is the disordered one, I guess, is the question.

00:01:38.520 The psychiatric industry, though, has basically set out to catalog and medicalize

00:01:47.700 every human behavior, emotion, inclination, temptation, and personality trait.

00:01:55.360 And it would seem that we're reaching a point where nobody in America can be considered normal.

00:02:03.120 And you really have to wonder, actually, where do the drug companies and the psychiatrists,

00:02:09.580 where do they get their idea for what is normal?

00:02:12.780 Because they're talking all the time about, well, that's abnormal, that's disordered.

00:02:16.220 Okay, well, what is normal to you?

00:02:18.860 What do you consider normal?

00:02:20.240 What is normal behavior?

00:02:22.300 What is a normal person?

00:02:23.920 What are normal feelings and normal thoughts?

00:02:26.860 What is a normal brain?

00:02:28.320 Because it seems like you, being the drug companies, the psychiatrists, doctors,

00:02:33.040 you very rarely come across anything you consider normal.

00:02:36.740 Everyone that comes to you apparently is abnormal.

00:02:39.580 So where are the normal people, is the question.

00:02:43.480 And, you know, as we look at this mysterious rise in mental illnesses across America,

00:02:50.880 you know, we're always told about the mental health epidemic.

00:02:53.860 There's, and we look at the fact that mental illnesses used to be incredibly rare,

00:02:59.960 and now it is utterly commonplace.

00:03:02.620 And we look at the fact that drug companies have so far gotten almost 20% of the population

00:03:10.640 of America onto psychiatric drugs.

00:03:13.940 And when you look at all those factors, I think you really have to start to wonder about

00:03:19.880 the chicken or the egg, because we could say that, well, yeah, all these people mysteriously

00:03:26.860 are coming up with mental disorders, and so that's why they're all on these drugs.

00:03:30.260 But many of these drugs cause suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression.

00:03:38.300 Meanwhile, a lot of Americans are having suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and depression.

00:03:43.760 So could there be a link there?

00:03:47.260 I mean, is that worth at least considering?

00:03:52.220 Here's the reality.

00:03:54.100 Before you had millions of Americans being put on these psychiatric drugs, you did not

00:04:00.300 have an epidemic of suicide, depression, anxiety.

00:04:04.540 Now you do.

00:04:05.840 And it just so happens that these drugs they're putting everybody on cause those things.

00:04:11.680 Again, it's, you know, it's enough to make you pause and just think for a minute, isn't

00:04:16.040 it?

00:04:17.260 Yet we don't pause.

00:04:18.900 We don't even think about this.

00:04:20.300 It seems like most people, we just go along with it.

00:04:24.220 Now, I focus very often on children when it comes to this issue, because I think nowhere

00:04:31.060 is the tendency to medicalize the human condition more apparent or more dangerous than with children.

00:04:37.060 I mean, we're putting kids on these drugs, and they're staying on them for their entire lives.

00:04:44.900 As most people know, there's been an astronomical rise in ADHD diagnoses over the last several

00:04:52.920 years.

00:04:53.420 And now somewhere around 10% of all children in the country have been labeled with this

00:04:58.500 alleged disorder.

00:04:59.280 And the label is being stuck on kids at earlier and earlier ages.

00:05:02.920 And we're now told that kids as young as three years old, three years old can be diagnosed with

00:05:10.160 ADHD.

00:05:11.840 There are new medical guidelines recommend that psychiatric drugs for kids can start at four

00:05:19.920 years old if their, quote, symptoms are, quote, debilitating.

00:05:24.180 Uh, and a third of all kids with ADHD are diagnosed before the age of six.

00:05:32.140 And again, when they put you on these drugs, there's very good chance you're going to be

00:05:37.640 on them forever.

00:05:38.820 You're never getting off of them.

00:05:41.400 It also just so happens that, um, there's a very high likelihood that somebody who is diagnosed

00:05:47.740 officially with ADHD as a child will develop later on other mental disorders.

00:05:53.560 And it just so happens that these drugs they're putting the kids on can cause those other problems

00:06:01.120 down the line.

00:06:02.440 Again, is there possibly a connection?

00:06:07.040 When you have someone who's easily distracted at the age of four and you put them on drugs

00:06:11.820 and then at the age of 16 or 18, now they have debilitating depression.

00:06:15.840 Is it possible that the drugs you've been, you've been, you've been, you've been the chemicals

00:06:20.560 that you've been sending into their brain, the drugs that you've had them on, uh, for

00:06:24.580 the last 10 years could have something to do with that?

00:06:27.520 Is it possible?

00:06:30.740 Um, of course, doctors will assure parents that the drugs are safe and will cause no long

00:06:36.900 term damage to their children.

00:06:38.780 But at best, at best, we don't know whether or not that's actually true.

00:06:45.840 So that is, when doctors are saying that they're lying, they cannot just, they will declare

00:06:53.380 it, but they can't do it honestly.

00:06:55.120 Oh yeah, that won't cause any problems down the line.

00:06:57.120 What?

00:06:59.300 There's plenty of reason to believe that these drugs are altering your child's brain in ways

00:07:06.840 that they will feel for years to come, possibly their entire lives.

00:07:10.240 And on what basis?

00:07:12.440 Now, I don't want to focus this whole time on ADHD and I've done, you know, I've written

00:07:15.820 and done shows on ADHD before, but, but I think, uh, we can't overlook ADHD because that's

00:07:22.740 a big part of this whole problem.

00:07:24.120 And I think it's a, I think it's a catalyst for a lot of the other problems down the line.

00:07:27.480 So we should ask on what basis do we take this incredible step as a society to drug into

00:07:37.000 oblivion, what used to be considered completely common and normal and even charming childhood

00:07:44.020 characteristics.

00:07:44.820 After all, any experienced parent will, can look at a list of ADHD symptoms and, and see

00:07:55.440 that they are the most normal characteristics in the world.

00:07:58.320 So here are a few symptoms, um, of ADHD in constant motion, squirms and fidgets, makes careless

00:08:07.440 mistakes, often loses things, does not seem to listen, easily distracted, does not finish

00:08:14.420 tasks.

00:08:16.160 Now, honestly, I would be more concerned about a child who doesn't display those symptoms

00:08:23.300 than I would be about a child who does.

00:08:26.840 So, so how on earth can we take these normal childhood behaviors and decide that in certain

00:08:35.420 cases they could be a manifestation of a mental illness?

00:08:38.560 Um, how do we do that?

00:08:46.740 Well, the, the National Institute of Mental Health offers a clue about this.

00:08:53.680 And this is what the National Institute of Mental Health said.

00:08:55.940 People who have ADHD have combinations of these symptoms.

00:09:01.120 Now, listen to the symptoms.

00:09:03.440 Overlook or miss details.

00:09:05.260 Make careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities.

00:09:11.260 Fail to not, fail to, um, to, to follow through on instructions.

00:09:16.720 Fail to finish schoolwork, chores or duties in the workplace.

00:09:20.620 Avoid or dislike tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as schoolwork or homework.

00:09:28.800 Lose things necessary for tasks or activities, such as school supplies, pencils, books, tools,

00:09:34.660 wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, and cell phones.

00:09:37.920 The Mayo Clinic puts it this way.

00:09:39.460 In general, a child shouldn't receive a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder unless the core

00:09:45.320 symptoms of ADHD start early in life, before age 12, and create significant problems at

00:09:51.480 home and at school on an ongoing basis.

00:09:56.720 You notice the, the word that kept popping up there.

00:10:00.280 School, school, school.

00:10:01.940 School, according to the medical community, a child's personality becomes diseased at the

00:10:08.920 precise moment that his personality interferes with his schooling.

00:10:15.320 Now, that's very odd, isn't it?

00:10:17.700 Because physical diseases aren't judged that way.

00:10:20.840 As I've said in the past, if you go to the doctor because you think you have diabetes,

00:10:27.240 he's going to run any number of tests on you.

00:10:29.740 But I guarantee you this, here's what he won't ask.

00:10:33.140 He won't ask you, well, is the diabetes causing problems at home or at school?

00:10:38.260 No, he's not going to ask that because it doesn't matter.

00:10:41.560 If it's a, if it is, if you have an objective case of diabetes, it makes no difference whether

00:10:46.740 or not it's causing problems for you in this or that environment.

00:10:50.900 It's, the disease exists one, either way.

00:10:55.020 Diabetes is diabetes at school.

00:10:57.340 Diabetes is diabetes at home.

00:10:59.740 Diabetes is diabetes when you're alone in the forest.

00:11:02.360 It doesn't matter what, you could be, you could be on a desert island all by yourself

00:11:05.620 and you would still have diabetes.

00:11:07.920 But ADHD is entirely different because if you're on a desert island by yourself, you

00:11:12.120 don't have ADHD because it's not getting in the way of anything.

00:11:14.960 If you're alone in the forest, you don't have ADHD because it's not getting in the way of

00:11:18.820 anything.

00:11:19.360 But the moment that it becomes a nuisance, the moment that it gets in the way of something

00:11:24.920 that you're doing, especially school, now it becomes a disorder.

00:11:28.660 So the disorder is subjective, environmental, contextual.

00:11:36.280 But how can that be a disorder of the person?

00:11:40.920 Is it not possible that our perception is just wrong?

00:11:45.120 Is it not possible further, possibly, that the environment itself is disordered?

00:11:50.980 If a school cannot function without putting hundreds of its students on psychiatric medication,

00:12:01.000 then should we not consider the possibility that the school environment is the disordered

00:12:06.500 thing and not the kids?

00:12:08.280 Should we not consider that maybe there is something about the way that we approach modern schooling

00:12:16.380 that makes it so difficult or impossible for children with certain personalities to succeed?

00:12:25.720 And if that's the case, then should we be changing the kids or should we be changing the school?

00:12:31.220 Now, this diagnostic criteria is rather peculiar, especially because advocates for ADHD drugs will

00:12:48.340 claim that the disorder can be located in the brain.

00:12:52.620 And we hear this about many mental illnesses where we're told that, oh, you know, you do your

00:13:03.480 research.

00:13:04.460 You don't know anything about the science.

00:13:05.920 It's in the brain.

00:13:07.120 It is in the brain.

00:13:08.540 You can see it in the brain.

00:13:10.360 Well, then answer me this.

00:13:13.200 If ADHD can be located in the brain, why is it diagnosed with a personality survey?

00:13:19.820 They say the same thing for depression, every other mental illness.

00:13:26.420 Yet, why don't they diagnose these mental illnesses with brain scans?

00:13:33.980 Why is that?

00:13:35.800 If you're telling me that, oh, it's clearly in the brain, well, then why aren't we looking

00:13:40.360 at the brain before we tell somebody that they have this disorder?

00:13:45.480 And here's what you never hear of happening.

00:13:47.400 Here's what never happens.

00:13:49.820 At least I've never heard of this.

00:13:51.140 And if you have, then correct me.

00:13:52.660 But I have never heard of anyone being diagnosed with ADHD or depression or what have you, and

00:14:00.080 then the diagnosis being changed or overturned when somebody looks at a brain scan.

00:14:08.720 I've never heard of that.

00:14:10.520 Like, you hear about that with other diseases.

00:14:13.440 You hear about somebody going to the doctor because they appear to have the symptoms of

00:14:19.120 some physical disease.

00:14:22.400 And then the doctor says, yeah, you might have it.

00:14:24.500 They run some tests.

00:14:25.520 And then they say, oh, no, you don't have it.

00:14:27.240 So that happens all the time with other diseases.

00:14:30.800 It never happens with these mental illnesses.

00:14:33.100 It's interesting, isn't it?

00:14:34.040 Because if these things can be found in the brain, then there should be people who think

00:14:52.320 we say, if there are neurological differences in your brain, then it proves that you have

00:14:58.140 whatever mental illness. 0.96

00:14:59.780 But if there aren't any neurological differences, you still have the mental illness.

00:15:04.600 You see, the drug companies win either way.

00:15:08.540 It's a rigged game, no matter what.

00:15:10.380 If you have the brain differences, then you see, it proves it.

00:15:13.700 If you don't have it, yeah, well, you still have it.

00:15:17.820 How is that?

00:15:18.680 How does...

00:15:20.380 Look, I admit to you, I'm not a scientist, all right?

00:15:22.440 But how is that consistent with the scientific process?

00:15:26.000 How is that medicine?

00:15:27.680 What is scientific about that?

00:15:29.580 It's like if a doctor called you up and said, well, the AIDS test came back negative.

00:15:34.600 Oh, thank God.

00:15:35.940 But you still have it.

00:15:37.560 What?

00:15:38.320 What do you mean?

00:15:38.980 You just said the tests are negative.

00:15:42.240 Now, it may be true, and I admit it may be true, that you can find certain neurological

00:15:50.320 similarities among certain people who have been diagnosed with ADHD or depression or any

00:15:57.020 number of other mental illnesses.

00:15:58.340 And so maybe you could look at a...

00:16:03.720 You could line up a bunch of, quote, ADHD brains and see certain things going on that

00:16:09.560 are similar among many of the brains, all right?

00:16:15.080 Okay, fine.

00:16:16.800 Even if you could find that.

00:16:18.360 You can also find neurological similarities among people with similar personalities and

00:16:24.740 dispositions like enthusiasm and altruism.

00:16:27.940 If you were to take a bunch of people who are very inclined to be enthusiastic, like my

00:16:33.020 wife, for instance, who's a very enthusiastic person, and if you were to look at her brain

00:16:37.220 and look at the brains of a bunch of other enthusiastic people, you'd probably find things

00:16:40.820 going on that are similar.

00:16:41.800 You'd find the same thing among optimists and among pessimists.

00:16:49.940 You know, they say that there's a, for lack of a better term, there is an optimistic brain

00:16:55.280 and a pessimistic brain.

00:16:58.380 But that doesn't prove that these similarities cause optimism or pessimism or enthusiasm or

00:17:07.420 hyperactivity.

00:17:08.400 You could also look at the brain scan of a man who's grieving his dead wife, and you could

00:17:16.000 find his grief reflected in his brain.

00:17:19.080 You could also see his happiness if his child was just born.

00:17:22.780 If, you know, a moment after his child is born, if you were to do a brain scan, you could

00:17:27.540 see that reflected in his brain.

00:17:30.940 You could even see the kind of calm joy that he finds in prayer reflected in his brain.

00:17:37.640 But that doesn't prove that the chemical reactions in his brain are causing the grief, the joy,

00:17:46.580 the closeness with God that he feels.

00:17:49.360 You see, just because you find it, and just because you find potentially some kind of a

00:17:55.340 correlation, that doesn't prove that the one causes the other.

00:17:58.740 And of course, I'm being very generous by even accepting this idea of brain differences.

00:18:06.820 After all, people are still told to this day that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance.

00:18:15.520 And drug companies still sell drugs based on that idea.

00:18:21.340 You know, drug companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars selling drugs that are

00:18:27.780 supposed to treat a chemical imbalance.

00:18:31.140 But here's the thing.

00:18:32.760 The drug companies know, and the doctors know, that this imbalance does not exist.

00:18:39.580 It has never been proven.

00:18:42.200 It has never been found.

00:18:43.780 It has never been demonstrated.

00:18:46.040 It was a theory concocted by psychiatrists decades ago.

00:18:50.740 And they've been trying for decades to prove it.

00:18:53.160 They never have.

00:18:55.200 Which explains why study after study have shown that antidepressants don't perform significantly

00:19:02.240 better than placebos.

00:19:03.600 And they especially don't perform better than active placebos. 1.00

00:19:07.280 An active placebo that they would give you in a medical trial is a pill that doesn't do

00:19:15.620 anything to treat whatever problem, but it does come with a certain side effect.

00:19:20.680 So like, maybe it's a placebo that will cause dry mouth or something like that, or give you

00:19:26.840 a headache.

00:19:27.240 Um, and the reason why they give an active placebo is because then, you know, it can kind

00:19:34.020 of trick your mind.

00:19:35.020 Once you, once you notice that you're having a side effect, well, then you're going to think

00:19:38.520 that, oh, this is a real drug.

00:19:40.200 And then the placebo effect can catch on.

00:19:42.580 So in other words, sometimes when they, when they, when they test a drug and then they, and

00:19:48.020 then, and then they have the placebo, those trials are not always, um, reliable because

00:19:56.580 it could be that the real drug is, is, is actually doing nothing, but it is causing some kind of

00:20:03.840 physical side effect, which tricks a person into thinking that the drug is doing something.

00:20:09.320 So, um, I think that could be why antidepressants historically perform not very well against placebo.

00:20:19.440 Let me quote now a paper in the public library of science.

00:20:23.460 To our knowledge, there is not a single peer reviewed article that can be accurately cited

00:20:30.220 to directly support claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder.

00:20:35.120 While there are many articles that present counter evidence yet again, they are putting millions

00:20:45.040 of people on these drugs to treat a, a chemical imbalance that doesn't exist and that they know

00:20:54.040 doesn't exist.

00:20:58.800 Now, and we just go along with it.

00:21:03.000 Like, I mean, it's incredible that, that we all just sit back and go along with this and

00:21:08.120 doctors go along with it, putting people on these drugs that are, are going to do all kinds of things

00:21:15.020 to their brain, but are not going to treat the actual chemical imbalance because it isn't there.

00:21:23.860 Now here I think is the problem with, uh, our whole approach to mental illnesses.

00:21:28.280 And, and, and, and this, by the way, I'm not talking about brain diseases, a brain disease

00:21:35.520 like dementia, where you can see the, the, the brain literally atrophy.

00:21:41.960 Now that's very different from a mental illness.

00:21:44.860 Um, and if a mental illness were a brain disease, then we wouldn't call it a mental illness.

00:21:52.500 In other words, if we could definitively see that this mental illness is caused by something

00:21:59.120 going haywire in the brain, and we could see that there's a, that there's a real disease

00:22:02.740 in the brain, then we would just call it a brain disease.

00:22:06.080 We wouldn't call it a mental illness.

00:22:07.780 Um, but we call them mental illnesses because they are, we say, diseases of the mind rather 0.95

00:22:16.360 than diseases of the brain.

00:22:21.040 But what is the mind?

00:22:22.500 And how can you diagnose it?

00:22:24.800 And how do you distinguish it from the brain?

00:22:28.940 See, the thing is, in diagnosing the mind as distinct from the brain, a psychiatrist is

00:22:37.460 now basically looking at the whole human person, okay, looking at how somebody feels, how they

00:22:44.820 live, how they think.

00:22:46.900 And from that deciding, based on entirely subjective criteria, that a person ought not be like that.

00:22:55.600 Now, it's easy.

00:22:57.400 Usually this is an easy process for, for a doctor.

00:23:00.640 Um, a doctor can look at a liver or a kidney or even a brain and say, no, that's not supposed

00:23:08.940 to do that.

00:23:10.900 And that's usually the medical process here.

00:23:13.240 It's like, there's a certain organ or a certain, certain part of the body that is malfunctioning.

00:23:17.740 And so you can look at that and you can see what the brain does during dementia.

00:23:22.260 Well, it's not supposed to do that, clearly.

00:23:24.980 And so there's a disease.

00:23:26.840 But with mental illnesses, we look at somebody prone to distraction or somebody who's in despair

00:23:35.600 or somebody who has anxiety.

00:23:37.760 And, um, and doctors say, well, no, humans aren't supposed to have those mental experiences.

00:23:43.160 Nope.

00:23:43.560 Or if they do have them, they should have them only for X amount of time and to Y degree.

00:23:51.700 Yet we never step back and ask, says who?

00:23:56.680 How can you possibly determine that?

00:23:59.440 How are you in authority on how people should think and act and feel?

00:24:05.400 Who, who put you in that position?

00:24:07.800 How is that even a medical determination?

00:24:10.360 A child isn't supposed to be easily distracted.

00:24:16.420 Who says?

00:24:19.420 Okay.

00:24:20.040 Based on how, what do you mean?

00:24:22.280 How did you determine that?

00:24:23.680 That a child isn't supposed to be that way?

00:24:28.060 No, it's very, okay.

00:24:29.180 You could look at a child and say, he is easily distracted.

00:24:32.460 Fine.

00:24:33.340 I know that you can do that.

00:24:35.800 But when you get to the, he shouldn't be part of it.

00:24:40.840 What, what does that mean?

00:24:43.020 What do you mean supposed to be, shouldn't be?

00:24:48.420 In order to, now to look at a person's like, well, they aren't supposed to feel like that,

00:24:53.100 or they aren't supposed to be like that.

00:24:55.800 In order to make a claim like that, and that is an incredible claim to make.

00:25:01.040 But in order to make that claim, you must have some idea of like the ideal person.

00:25:09.580 So if I'm looking at something and saying, well, it's not supposed to do that, I must

00:25:13.600 have an idea about what it's supposed to do.

00:25:16.460 So I can look at a computer, and if I knew about computers, which I don't, but if I were

00:25:22.120 an expert on computers, and the computer was having a problem, I could say, no, that computer

00:25:26.040 is not supposed to do that.

00:25:27.000 And the reason why I can say that is because I know what a computer is supposed to do, and

00:25:31.380 I can prove it for you.

00:25:32.180 I can take a normal computer and show you, oh, no, this is what a computer is supposed

00:25:35.920 to do.

00:25:36.540 Here's what your computer is doing.

00:25:38.420 Here's the, you know, there's a disconnect here.

00:25:40.960 And so here's how we can fix it.

00:25:42.100 But when you look at a person, and you say, they aren't supposed to be and feel like that,

00:25:49.200 well, then what you have to be able to do is you have to be able to take a, quote, normal

00:25:52.100 person and say, oh, no, that, you see that person there?

00:25:55.040 That's how you're supposed to be.

00:25:58.280 How could you possibly determine that?

00:26:00.340 And where is this normal person?

00:26:02.980 Where is this normal standard for a person by which we are all being judged?

00:26:07.280 Now, of course, if you take an entirely materialistic view of humanity, which most psychiatrists

00:26:19.760 do, then you have to believe that everything a person feels, everything he thinks, all of

00:26:27.400 his traits, his characteristics, his flaws, his sins, his desires, his goals, his love,

00:26:32.880 his joy, his despair, and so on, are all just material phenomena.

00:26:38.100 But if, on the other hand, you factor in the soul and free will and the uniqueness of each

00:26:47.140 person created by a divine force, then it's clear that there's something deeper, okay?

00:26:53.100 There is something called a soul, and that is what drives and animates a person.

00:27:00.720 He said, I think it's really kind of a philosophical question at the root of this whole, well, there

00:27:05.740 are many philosophical questions.

00:27:07.280 We have allowed the medical community and the drug companies, they have, in my opinion,

00:27:15.320 they have gone way beyond medicine and science, and they have wandered into philosophy.

00:27:22.360 And we are allowing them to tackle these really deep philosophical questions.

00:27:29.300 Like when you say a person isn't supposed to be and feel like that, that is a philosophical

00:27:35.720 judgment, not a scientific one.

00:27:39.600 And there's another question, too, and a philosophical question.

00:27:43.780 What drives, what animates a person?

00:27:47.220 If you say that we are nothing but flesh and bone, then I guess you would have to answer

00:27:54.200 that what really drives and animates us is our brain chemistry.

00:27:59.040 But if you're not a materialist, then you would say that what drives and animates us, the animating

00:28:07.600 force within us is actually our soul or our mind.

00:28:13.800 And again, it comes, you know, so for me, since I'm not a materialist, I would say that the soul

00:28:18.620 and the mind are the same thing.

00:28:19.720 Now, if you are a materialist, I don't even know what you mean when you say mind.

00:28:24.740 What are you talking about?

00:28:25.860 There's only the brain.

00:28:26.880 There is no mind, per se.

00:28:29.500 So I'm not even sure what that means.

00:28:31.020 But you get into, you say the word mental, mental illness, but all you believe in is, 0.76

00:28:36.820 but you only accept the existence of a brain.

00:28:42.100 Well, I think there's a confusion.

00:28:44.120 You can't even define what a mind is, yet you're diagnosing it.

00:28:49.720 So I would say, and I think anyone who's not a materialist would have to say that

00:28:53.740 your mind is your soul, you know, it's one and the same.

00:28:58.880 So the point is, even if a chemical imbalancement could be found, and it hasn't been, but even if it

00:29:06.780 were, there would still be a question about whether that imbalancement is a reflection or

00:29:11.880 a symptom of the spiritual problem rather than itself being the cause of the problem.

00:29:19.720 And even if you don't factor in the human soul, I mean, this is just, that's just one of the

00:29:25.500 issues here, even if you don't factor that in, and even if you did prove this imbalancement

00:29:31.560 theory, still, you wouldn't be able to prove that the imbalancement causes whatever disorder

00:29:38.640 because you couldn't prove that the imbalancement isn't itself caused by, say, environmental factors

00:29:45.180 or life experience or any number of other things.

00:29:49.320 So again, there are these enormous leaps of logic that are being made when we talk about

00:29:56.040 mental illnesses.

00:29:56.900 And we're just allowing the drug companies and doctors to make those leaps.

00:30:01.460 And we're not even questioning them.

00:30:02.980 But even if we were to put all this to the side, even if you were to accept just for a moment that brain

00:30:13.280 chemistry determines everything about a person, and even if we were to accept that there is this

00:30:23.960 chemical imbalancement, and the chemical imbalancement itself does cause, say, ADHD or depression or

00:30:29.460 whatever, that still wouldn't prove that a particular personality, like the ADHD personality, for

00:30:37.980 instance, is disordered.

00:30:41.900 It doesn't prove, in other words, that a person shouldn't be that way.

00:30:48.820 We've decided that kids aren't supposed to be that way.

00:30:52.440 We've decreed it from on high like gods, and then we've set out to chemically eliminate

00:30:58.300 every human disposition that we find inconvenient or difficult, but that is subjective.

00:31:04.360 It's arbitrary.

00:31:05.620 It's not scientific.

00:31:07.760 And again, we do the same thing with adults.

00:31:09.800 We do it with all people.

00:31:11.080 We look at unfavorable characteristics, emotions, and personalities, and we decide that because

00:31:16.800 they are unfavorable, they must therefore be medical.

00:31:21.920 But I don't think that's how medicine works.

00:31:23.760 So we may say, for instance, that somebody has an anxiety disorder.

00:31:34.740 Okay, but who's to say that they shouldn't have anxiety?

00:31:38.900 The anxiety is disordered.

00:31:40.480 Okay, well, what do you mean?

00:31:42.160 What is the proper order for anxiety?

00:31:46.860 Say it's a disorder of anxiety.

00:31:48.600 Okay, well, how is anxiety supposed to work?

00:31:51.860 Or are you saying that there shouldn't be any anxiety at all?

00:31:55.700 How do you determine that?

00:31:57.460 And who determined it?

00:31:58.980 And on what authority?

00:32:01.080 Based on what science?

00:32:03.720 Now, I have a lot of anxiety.

00:32:06.100 It's unpleasant.

00:32:07.100 I don't like it.

00:32:08.280 And no, I don't think that a person should live consumed by anxiety.

00:32:13.320 But neither do I think that anxiety is necessarily a medical condition.

00:32:17.940 And I also think that it hasn't been proven to be a medical condition.

00:32:25.740 It has rather been decided philosophically that it must be a medical condition.

00:32:33.580 And that's a problem.

00:32:34.580 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.

00:32:50.940 Serious problems.

00:32:54.520 Difficult, painful problems.

00:32:56.340 That doesn't mean that the problems are medical.

00:33:01.080 It doesn't mean that they're physical at all.

00:33:04.080 There could be other things going wrong.

00:33:07.460 Things in your life.

00:33:09.780 Things in your soul.

00:33:10.980 You know, just, there's any number of other things that could be happening to cause problems for a person.

00:33:17.620 But what we've done is we have eliminated all of those possibilities, and now everything has to just be medical and physical.

00:33:28.420 I'm not saying that mental illnesses don't exist.

00:33:31.580 I'm saying that there are many questions we aren't asking, and we should be.

00:33:36.100 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.

00:33:54.240 Yet that is exactly what we've done with mental illness.

00:33:57.500 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.

00:34:11.060 That's what I'm saying.

00:34:13.780 And that's all I'm saying.

00:34:17.640 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.

00:34:28.020 Just a thought.

00:34:30.840 Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:34:31.720 Thanks for listening.

00:34:32.340 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - July 18, 2018

Ep. 64 - We're All Mentally Disordered

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