I tried to get an AI today to write a little paragraph about some of the issues with modern psychiatry / psychology in relation to the prescribing of drugs to try to treat mental health disorders and the lack of good results overall.
Of course, the AI refused, giving me a bunch of gobbledygook about how this would be “misinformation.”
But in reality, does the mental health profession in the Western world actually cure anything? Are they actually doing anything that’s really improving our mental health overall? Because from my perspective, all I see is the degradation of mental health in our Western societies, and it’s getting worse and worse year by year. I believe that the monopoly that psychology and psychiatry have on mental health is a problem. It’s a model that’s clearly not working.
If you look at the statistics, suicide rates are up. There are record numbers of people on mental health medications such as antidepressants and antianxiety medications. We even have studies now that show that these medications aren’t really working. In many cases, these medications are also causing youth to commit extreme acts of violence, such as mass shootings.
Why are we still clinging on to the idea that these mental health models are working? Clearly they aren’t. Clearly they aren’t.
Worse, these professions have now been overtaken by certain political ideologies that are serving as detriments to unbiased and objective looks at complex issues such as gender dysphoria. We now have activists instead of objective doctors and mental health professionals.
So why has this profession that is clearly failing become a sacred cow?
In part, it’s due to fear, and also attachment on the part of the people who are reliant on these medications to have a sense of control over their lives.
If you talk to the average young person, there’s a high likelihood that they’re going to be on antidepressants or some other medication for their mental health, even if their mental health issues aren’t that severe. These drugs are now being given out like candy.
I recently spoke to someone who was actually prescribed Zoloft, not by a psychologist, but a gynecologist. They hadn’t actually met with a psychiatrist or psychologist. They weren’t doing any sort of talk therapy, and they weren’t exhibiting, at least from my perspective, any sort of severe anxiety, but the gynecologist prescribed diagnosed them with generalized anxiety disorder and gave them the prescription.
Now why is a gynecologist allowed to do this in the first place? Because here’s the thing. If I, as an Ayurvedic Practitioner or a life coach, were to suggest to somebody that they had generalized anxiety disorder and recommended any sort of treatment for it, I could get into trouble. Why is a gynecologist who is not a mental health professional being allowed to do this? This is very egregious, but it does point to our drug culture.
People want quick fixes or they believe falsely that they are just simply the sum of their chemicals and not something greater.
I can speak from personal experience, because when I was in college around the time I turned 20, I developed severe depression following my the divorce of my mother from my first stepfather. I went to the mental health clinic at the college and did not find much relief. I was prescribed Zoloft for generalized anxiety disorder, which confused me because I was personally experiencing severe depression.
The Zoloft created visual hallucinations that were the precursor to a seizure, and so a neurologist assessed me and told me that I must get off these drugs and never take them again. This was actually a blessing, because I then realized that I needed to find a way to manage my emotions without drugs. I would never touch an antidepressant or mental health medication ever again, out of fear of seizures.
And I’m very lucky that I had that reaction, because I had to come to terms with my mental health. I did not have the crutch that everybody else has.
The irony of this is that when I’ve tried to share with people who are on the drugs that you could actually find ways to get better without the drugs, I will have people lash out at me to the point where I’ve been literally stalked because of this.
People get very angry when you tell them that they can get over their mental health problems without drugs, because they have this false assumption that by saying this that you’re blaming them for their predicament and you’re somehow making some sort of judgment against them.
I’m not making any sort of judgment. I’m simply saying there are other ways to get better. For myself, the turning point for me came in a moment when I was in my room in a house I was renting with some friends. I was sitting on the floor and trying to determine whether the depression that was threatening to swallow me up would do so, and I made a decision.
I asked myself a question, was I simply a bag of chemicals and my chemicals controlled me, or was I something greater? Was I soul with a body? If so, if I was a soul, then my chemicals weren’t me, and therefore I could control my chemicals.
I made the decision that I was a soul and not chemicals, and it was from that point forward that I started to get a handle on my severe depression. I’ve never been that depressed ever since. Even though I have had definite moments of severe anxiety, and I’ve been down, certainly. (I struggle with, the blues quite often these days with how terrible things are in the world.) But overall, I have a good handle on my emotions, and I have learned how to cope without drugs.
The ways that I have learned to cope include a lot of holistic methodologies, including energy healing, acupressure and acupuncture, mantra meditation, sound healing, and prayer. I believe a connection to God is very important for healing. I do believe in Jesus, as much as I am theologically liberal, and I also do yoga.
But if I tried to tell people that you could potentially mitigate or even cure your mental health issues by turning to Jesus or practicing more meditation, I could potentially get a very strongly worded letter from somebody in the government, if not perhaps even sued in some way.
We aren’t allowed to give alternatives. We are simply told that the only way to do this is through modern psychological and psychiatric methods, but these are clearly not working.
Now I have a lot more to say on this subject and how it relates to the whole woke movement...and the inability of our young people to handle dissent or disagreement because they’ve been trained by modern psychology to be fragile and overly sensitive.
Abigail Schrier has written a book on this. I believe it’s called Bad Therapy, and I’ve seen it personally even in some of the holistic trainings I’ve done. This toxic psychology has been infiltrating into the yoga world and the holistic world. Many American yogis are ceding power to the Western mindset and watering down yoga philosophy to fit into a coddled, psychologically acceptable version, where any sort of slight criticism is removed for fear of bruising a fragile ego.
One such (frankly silly) example is the rewording of “ahimsa” – meaning nonviolence – into “compassion” because having the word “violence” in describing nonviolence is somehow seen as a bad thing. This is ridiculous. I’ve even heard yogis get bugged by the idea of dharma as a “duty,” because God forbid there might be something “external” you should be beholden to (such as, off the top of my head, duty that a parent might have towards a child).
Modern psychology has become very coddling and enabling, and this overly sensitive mindset is infiltrating everything. Ultimately, this disempowers people and turns them into fragile victims who need to wrap themselves up into bubble wrap to avoid experiencing even slight disapproval.
The pharmaceutical drug culture is also ultimately disempowering – it says that you can’t get better without a pill. What’s ironic is that there is nothing more “external” than using a drug to control your emotions, but contradiction is inherent in the new fragility mindset.
I’m trying to come up with ways to counter this, even if it’s simply just articulating this here, but also in the work that I do. My goal is to empower people to help themselves and each other.
When I teach people how to use a method such as using a particular mudra and a meditation practice, I’m teaching people how to heal the underlying energetic and spiritual imbalances that are contributing to the mental health issue. When we use those techniques, we don’t necessarily need to even understand what the underlying reason is for the problem. We don’t need to do years of talk therapy. We don’t need to obsess over it or think about it too much.
And sometimes, in many cases, the thinking is the problem.
What I am seeing with the neurotic narcissism that’s being fueled by modern psychology is this idea that people need to wallow and swim in their pains and their traumas...that they need to spend time overly thinking about it and processing it and focusing on themselves.
If you do that, you’re going to get stuck into a trap. It’s a sinkhole or quicksand. It’s very tempting, though, because in some ways there’s some comfort in that narcissism.
But neurotic narcissism, especially the kind that’s being cultivated by woke psychology, is damaging not only our young people, but destroying Western culture.
We need to find ways to articulate a better vision and in doing so we need to try to be as positive as possible. It’s very challenging for me because I’m very good at being a critic and it’s harder for me to be an inspiring leader, but I’m working on it.
What thoughts do you have about these problems? Please share in the comments below.
PS I offer Ayurveda, coaching, and yoga therapy in our online Wholistic Clinic…in case you want some alternatives.
The problem, as I see it, is that people don’t want to believe they can solve their own problems because then they would be responsible for their situation, whatever that may be. When my oldest son was a toddler, he tripped and fell while walking quickly on the sidewalk, as happens when they are “toddling”. To my amazement, my MIL immediately berated the “bad sidewalk” and comforted my son. I stood there dumbfounded for a moment and then said, “why are you blaming the sidewalk? He fell. It happens. He will learn, but the sidewalk did nothing.” She responded with something o the effect of she didn’t want my son to feel bad for falling. And to me, this entire episode is a micro example of what is wrong with people today and it the source of the “neurotic narcissism” the author mentioned. My son was a baby, it wasn’t his “fault” , it was just part of learning and he did have control. (I’m pretty confident that now in his 30s, he rarely falls when walking.😅). I guess my point is that we’ve disempowered our younger people by taking away the understanding that they can fix their circumstances on their own, without paying “experts” thousands of dollars and without being dependent upon a pharmaceutical solution.
Yes. Instead of properly selected nutrition for infants with esophageal reflux, which can in the vast majority of cases cure or very well improve the child’s condition, people make very expensive and symptomatic types of alternative treatment and simply do not provide the opportunity to significantly help in treating the disease.