NBC has also been at the forefront of normalizing the belief system of gender dysphoria in children and young people - a condition that supposedly requires medicalizing their objectively healthy human bodies for life. Thank you for your continuous efforts to bring these issues to light.
Thank you for the work you do and for being on the panel. Thank you for fighting for us women and our children. The panel was great and I hope that there is some change that comes out of it. I recently had a baby and it's disheartening to hear of so many moms going on SSRIs because of the intense feelings of overwhelm and sadness they're feeling. This is what happens when you take away the village. We're isolated, alone without support and help. We're going through pregnancies without community wisdom from older moms around us. We are left without help to raise our older children and learn how to integrate a new family member. The solution isn't a mind altering drug.
Listening to your podcast from a few months ago, you and a guest discussed how SSRIs can cause sexual dysfunction as well. I was curious on the link between SSRI use and breastfeeding. The process of having a letdown during breastfeeding is due to oxytocin being released in the brain. If there is dysfunction with this because of the use of an SSRI, it seems to me there would be issues with breastfeeding. There is such a large number of women who are under suppling the breast milk their babies need and I'm curious to know if SSRIs played a role. This is something that needs to be looked into and talked about as well before women are prescribed these drugs.
I was prescribed SSRIs in my early 20s and I bounced around from one drug to another to find the "right combination" and was on at least 2 at a time. In 2011, I felt so disconnected from life that I just quit taking everything. Not taking anything helped me feel so much better, just like you advocate for (obviously I didn't follow recommendations for tapering). But now that I've been trying to breastfeed my children, struggle with undersupply and having enough milk for them, I'm having to resort to other medication to increase my milk supply. It's still not enough. With my first, I had to supplement with additional donor milk. I wish this is something I knew about before taking any SSRI. I needed a village around me to support me through the loss of my grandmother and help me process other emotions I wasn't raised to handle, not to be prescribed drugs.
I hope you share your story as much as possible with others. You also are helping inform future mothers. I’m impressed by your persistence and thankful you were able to get off that merry-go-round of pharmaceuticals. I had to supplement breast milk for all three of my babies years ago and never took any meds prior. 🤷🏻♀️Breastfeeding isn’t easy for us all. Keep up the fight and trust God for the rest. Be well.
As a fellow truth seeking psychologist, I want you to know how proud I am of how you represent psychologists. Frankly I am too often embarrassed by the way that psychologists fall into line and do not question the overuse of medication. When you meet with a teenager regularly and you can see that they are not getting a benefit from a medication, you are ethically bound to communicate that to the prescriber. It is shocking and deeply disturbing how little evaluation goes into medication children and adolescents.
I had a friend who was on anti-depressants since the age of fifteen. She did not want to be on them but could extricate herself. She became a school psychologist, and was trained to diagnose kids, who would then connect with a doctor for prescriptions. These kids were funneled from the school to Pharma regardless of how these meds would damage them over the long term.
I believe that School Psychologists cannot diagnose behavioral health conditions. They can provide data to a medical provider, who could diagnose. It is amazing to me how many kids are diagnosed with ADHD without adequate data gathered in both home AND school settings. How many kids are medicated for the convenience of adults without a thorough diagnostic evaluation. This is why it is so important to support someone like Dr McFillin, who is speaking up for kids.
I think the psychologist can give a diagnosis; they can't prescribe. I say this because my friend would be pressured by parents for a diagnosis because it would allow for advantages, don't know what those are, but it would make life easier for parents who were under pressure.
This piece confirms what I've always known mostly but could not articulate for a long time, medications can't touch where one hurts. Former short term depression meds consumer, here. I lean towards anti-meds, though. The way people describe women's emotions and sensitivities as a complex problem is very offensive to me. The pharm, media industries, all its propped-up supports must die a much quicker death, looking forward to that day. The quicker we humans unplug from it the better.
Also, I find that women who lean toward victim status are at higher risk to believe their doctors and the tv ads when they really just need validation and tools.
I agree that we women feeling emotions more deeply is a strength, not a weakness or mental illness.
And I listened to the five minute video and I LOVE that you said that emotions (and really everything we experience) are signals. (And I’m grossly paraphrasing here because I can’t toggle back and forth between the video and comments here but) when we prescribe SSRIs etc, we essentially dull or turn off these important signals.
I love this!
And yes, you spoke from the heart. To an apparently heartless crowd. 😣😡😩
Brilliant summary that touches upon some key concerns I'm uncovering as I research what comes after PTSD, or C-PTSD.
The medicalization of normal human experience has gone on too long and is set to reach unforetold of heights of horrific overusage in the global general population. A medicalization of normal human experience as 'the way forward' will not be accepted by me, and every day my interactions with all and sundry during work, travels and sheer happenstance is where i'll fight against it. There is no hope for the greater wellbeing of society if a collective post-plandemic trauma becomes symptomatic of the 'the new normal' culture we must share. Unresolved Traumas is what precedes "the new Culture of Abuse" and indifference towards the impending anti-human 'new normal' future tacitly seals our shared acceptance of a yet more awful than the current 'new normal' medicalized morality.
"The way forward"? Call it instead for what shall be imminently unleashed on us: A Society of torture!
The smothering digital blanket of self-imposed isolation is forcing a widespread network where each connected node plugs into the collectivized tragedy of seeking false connectivity to each other via interactions online. No longer inspired or driven by the need for deep social and emotional bonds, motivated by addictions to 'the new normal' of dopamine-driven parasocial interactions. Human touch and communal gatherings substituted with conditional access to ephemeral projections of ersatz human-like simulacra.
We are unable to process trauma through well-established processes of communal gathering, chanting, drumming, beating, corroboree or any kind of ritual. Digitalization is not in our DNA, depression is not in our destiny. Stopping this fucking shit begins by Reclaiming the Streets with music & mirth!!!!!
I'm 65. I've been on anti-anxiety medications for 40 years, with a few years off of them when I had my children. Thank you God! Both kids experience anxiety, but deal with it in natural ways. Both turned out to be productive, intelligent, good people despite my anxious single parenting. I tried getting off meds for three very long years, but couldn't deal with the withdrawal symptoms that kept recurring despite my practice as a Functional Nutritional Therapist and wellness enthusiast. So I appreciate your advocacy for women who may needlessly be prescribed psych medications. Had my doctor helped me learn how to deal with my emotions in time-tested, natural ways, maybe I'd be a few pounds lighter, more focused, better off financially, and able to help others do the same.
It is a pity you didn't get real help. Regardless, you are a hero. Single mothers are amazing. Maybe one day you will find someone who can help you wean off in ways that you can cope.
Thank you for your reporting. Thankfully (and rightfully so), people are questioning these institutions — legacy media and big pharma — more and more. Staying healthy seems to be the only recourse. In my own experience, my PCP always asks me about my mental health (knowing I've taken SSRIs in the past) and is always sure to tell me that if I feel down enough to let her know and she can write me a prescription. I hate that that is the first place doctors go. How about exercise, nature, community service, meditation, community?
Before the 1800's no pregnant women took any drugs. Humanity still flourished and keep on growing despite a multitude of failed births. I see no need of any pregnant woman to take any drugs, vaccines or mRNA poisons...before, during or after pregnancy. And none for the newborns either. There may be extreme cases requiring some drugs as not all pregnancies go well.
It only makes sense that the MSM, now fully controlled by big pharma, is going to do their bidding. Revenues and profits are in demand, not health and sane living. It is all part of marketing us to death as any ad can say ANYTHING and the consumer will believe it. All of the MSM is founded on telling lies to suit the agendas of those who buy the ad spaces.
You are up against Pharma via conflicts of interest. The U.S. is over drugged because of legal advertising on radio and TV, most of the world does not allow this. I think though there is more to the story regarding depression in young women other than emotional depth. When women are under long term stress at home, school, with friendships etc...it raises cortisol, which lowers progesterone causing an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, leading to mood swings through their cycles. The dots need to be connected, linking environmental stressors and diet to hormonal shifts resulting in anxiety and depression. Even Testosterone levels in girls vary and will impact personality, energy and emotional expression. Females have a biological clock which ticks in the background exerting pressure to find the right mate sooner rather than later. Marriage is no longer a financial sanctuary for women with kids, so women must have well-paying careers to thrive in cases of divorce, and divorce is rampant. Then there is pornography, where girls never age, and its viewing has been normalized. TV shows throw in the odd joke on the subject as though 'of course pornography is part of a healthy social landscape' when in fact physiologically it has negative effects on the brain, body, marriages, relationships and women's self-confidence. From the perspective of marriage vows, it is cheating on your spouse, and even if the spouse is on board with it, they don't understand the invisible negative effects that really can't be compartmentalized or rationalized away. Young men and young women have been born into a world that has a directive to consume them, body and soul.
You said, "If women's tears aren't symptoms of a mental illness but natural responses, if their mood fluctuations aren't pathology but natural rhythms, if their emotional struggles aren't diseases but growth opportunities, then Pfizer's stock price becomes a problem."
I agree with that to some extent, but I think there's more to it. What if it is not just regular female fluctuations in emotions and a reframing of those fluctuations as pathological, boosted by social contagion? What if it is also iatrogenic injury manifesting in symptoms like anxiety and depression? Two likely culprits: birth control and high-aluminum content vaccines.
Yes, I agree that birth control and vaccine damage may also play important roles. Not to mention the impact of social media.
When we had my children, it was still in the post-Thalidomide era where it was strongly discouraged from medicating the mom unless it was absolutely necessary. There was sanity, in that respect. Now, all of that caution has been thrown to the wind. They give the moms SSRI's, multiple high intensity ultrasounds and numerous vaccines. The kids are attacked even before birth and the onslaught of their own vaccines. This is criminal and the damage is incalculable, but registering in an explosion of chronic disease among kids.
Taking the birth control pill changes hormonal levels which affect the brain. Also, studies show that taking birth control pills long term trigger early menopause. Some women have PMD, and suffer badly, and other girls don't go through such wild swings. So, hormones do play a role, the question is how to balance them naturally, not with drugs.
I find out the hard way that everything in this article is true. But most people don't want to know this truth; they prefer to keep believing that drugs are the answer. When I tell people the chemical imbalance theory is rubbish and has never been proven, they react the same way they would if I openly declared I was anti-vax. The pharma companies have been so successful at selling their narratives, anyone who questions them is suspect.
It puts me in mind of a scene in terminator where the melted metal gathers and forms a body.
I’ve been saying this for years in my small corner of the Earth plain, why are we medicalising normal human behaviour? Is it any wonder that we are sad and anxious given the state of society presently? Slowly I’m seeing the lone voice’s coalescing. The truth will always rise to the top.
I hope it becomes taboo to suggest SSRIs by friends when sharing emotional issues. It is peer pressure suggested by those who know little on the harmful consequences. You may as well be saying to a friend, 'I heard smoking a fag can take the edge off' maybe it's worth a try.
NBC has also been at the forefront of normalizing the belief system of gender dysphoria in children and young people - a condition that supposedly requires medicalizing their objectively healthy human bodies for life. Thank you for your continuous efforts to bring these issues to light.
And here is one of their main tactics for both gender dysphoria and anxiety/depression:
You/your child will commit suicide without this medical/pharmaceutical intervention, presented as a certainty.
Thank you for the work you do and for being on the panel. Thank you for fighting for us women and our children. The panel was great and I hope that there is some change that comes out of it. I recently had a baby and it's disheartening to hear of so many moms going on SSRIs because of the intense feelings of overwhelm and sadness they're feeling. This is what happens when you take away the village. We're isolated, alone without support and help. We're going through pregnancies without community wisdom from older moms around us. We are left without help to raise our older children and learn how to integrate a new family member. The solution isn't a mind altering drug.
Listening to your podcast from a few months ago, you and a guest discussed how SSRIs can cause sexual dysfunction as well. I was curious on the link between SSRI use and breastfeeding. The process of having a letdown during breastfeeding is due to oxytocin being released in the brain. If there is dysfunction with this because of the use of an SSRI, it seems to me there would be issues with breastfeeding. There is such a large number of women who are under suppling the breast milk their babies need and I'm curious to know if SSRIs played a role. This is something that needs to be looked into and talked about as well before women are prescribed these drugs.
I was prescribed SSRIs in my early 20s and I bounced around from one drug to another to find the "right combination" and was on at least 2 at a time. In 2011, I felt so disconnected from life that I just quit taking everything. Not taking anything helped me feel so much better, just like you advocate for (obviously I didn't follow recommendations for tapering). But now that I've been trying to breastfeed my children, struggle with undersupply and having enough milk for them, I'm having to resort to other medication to increase my milk supply. It's still not enough. With my first, I had to supplement with additional donor milk. I wish this is something I knew about before taking any SSRI. I needed a village around me to support me through the loss of my grandmother and help me process other emotions I wasn't raised to handle, not to be prescribed drugs.
I hope you share your story as much as possible with others. You also are helping inform future mothers. I’m impressed by your persistence and thankful you were able to get off that merry-go-round of pharmaceuticals. I had to supplement breast milk for all three of my babies years ago and never took any meds prior. 🤷🏻♀️Breastfeeding isn’t easy for us all. Keep up the fight and trust God for the rest. Be well.
As a fellow truth seeking psychologist, I want you to know how proud I am of how you represent psychologists. Frankly I am too often embarrassed by the way that psychologists fall into line and do not question the overuse of medication. When you meet with a teenager regularly and you can see that they are not getting a benefit from a medication, you are ethically bound to communicate that to the prescriber. It is shocking and deeply disturbing how little evaluation goes into medication children and adolescents.
I had a friend who was on anti-depressants since the age of fifteen. She did not want to be on them but could extricate herself. She became a school psychologist, and was trained to diagnose kids, who would then connect with a doctor for prescriptions. These kids were funneled from the school to Pharma regardless of how these meds would damage them over the long term.
I believe that School Psychologists cannot diagnose behavioral health conditions. They can provide data to a medical provider, who could diagnose. It is amazing to me how many kids are diagnosed with ADHD without adequate data gathered in both home AND school settings. How many kids are medicated for the convenience of adults without a thorough diagnostic evaluation. This is why it is so important to support someone like Dr McFillin, who is speaking up for kids.
I think the psychologist can give a diagnosis; they can't prescribe. I say this because my friend would be pressured by parents for a diagnosis because it would allow for advantages, don't know what those are, but it would make life easier for parents who were under pressure.
This piece confirms what I've always known mostly but could not articulate for a long time, medications can't touch where one hurts. Former short term depression meds consumer, here. I lean towards anti-meds, though. The way people describe women's emotions and sensitivities as a complex problem is very offensive to me. The pharm, media industries, all its propped-up supports must die a much quicker death, looking forward to that day. The quicker we humans unplug from it the better.
Also, I find that women who lean toward victim status are at higher risk to believe their doctors and the tv ads when they really just need validation and tools.
Grrrrr
I agree that we women feeling emotions more deeply is a strength, not a weakness or mental illness.
And I listened to the five minute video and I LOVE that you said that emotions (and really everything we experience) are signals. (And I’m grossly paraphrasing here because I can’t toggle back and forth between the video and comments here but) when we prescribe SSRIs etc, we essentially dull or turn off these important signals.
I love this!
And yes, you spoke from the heart. To an apparently heartless crowd. 😣😡😩
Brilliant summary that touches upon some key concerns I'm uncovering as I research what comes after PTSD, or C-PTSD.
The medicalization of normal human experience has gone on too long and is set to reach unforetold of heights of horrific overusage in the global general population. A medicalization of normal human experience as 'the way forward' will not be accepted by me, and every day my interactions with all and sundry during work, travels and sheer happenstance is where i'll fight against it. There is no hope for the greater wellbeing of society if a collective post-plandemic trauma becomes symptomatic of the 'the new normal' culture we must share. Unresolved Traumas is what precedes "the new Culture of Abuse" and indifference towards the impending anti-human 'new normal' future tacitly seals our shared acceptance of a yet more awful than the current 'new normal' medicalized morality.
"The way forward"? Call it instead for what shall be imminently unleashed on us: A Society of torture!
The smothering digital blanket of self-imposed isolation is forcing a widespread network where each connected node plugs into the collectivized tragedy of seeking false connectivity to each other via interactions online. No longer inspired or driven by the need for deep social and emotional bonds, motivated by addictions to 'the new normal' of dopamine-driven parasocial interactions. Human touch and communal gatherings substituted with conditional access to ephemeral projections of ersatz human-like simulacra.
We are unable to process trauma through well-established processes of communal gathering, chanting, drumming, beating, corroboree or any kind of ritual. Digitalization is not in our DNA, depression is not in our destiny. Stopping this fucking shit begins by Reclaiming the Streets with music & mirth!!!!!
I'm 65. I've been on anti-anxiety medications for 40 years, with a few years off of them when I had my children. Thank you God! Both kids experience anxiety, but deal with it in natural ways. Both turned out to be productive, intelligent, good people despite my anxious single parenting. I tried getting off meds for three very long years, but couldn't deal with the withdrawal symptoms that kept recurring despite my practice as a Functional Nutritional Therapist and wellness enthusiast. So I appreciate your advocacy for women who may needlessly be prescribed psych medications. Had my doctor helped me learn how to deal with my emotions in time-tested, natural ways, maybe I'd be a few pounds lighter, more focused, better off financially, and able to help others do the same.
It is a pity you didn't get real help. Regardless, you are a hero. Single mothers are amazing. Maybe one day you will find someone who can help you wean off in ways that you can cope.
Thank you for your reporting. Thankfully (and rightfully so), people are questioning these institutions — legacy media and big pharma — more and more. Staying healthy seems to be the only recourse. In my own experience, my PCP always asks me about my mental health (knowing I've taken SSRIs in the past) and is always sure to tell me that if I feel down enough to let her know and she can write me a prescription. I hate that that is the first place doctors go. How about exercise, nature, community service, meditation, community?
Plus, the whole depression not being caused by serotonin deficiency thing...
Which is approaching common knowledge...
Before the 1800's no pregnant women took any drugs. Humanity still flourished and keep on growing despite a multitude of failed births. I see no need of any pregnant woman to take any drugs, vaccines or mRNA poisons...before, during or after pregnancy. And none for the newborns either. There may be extreme cases requiring some drugs as not all pregnancies go well.
It only makes sense that the MSM, now fully controlled by big pharma, is going to do their bidding. Revenues and profits are in demand, not health and sane living. It is all part of marketing us to death as any ad can say ANYTHING and the consumer will believe it. All of the MSM is founded on telling lies to suit the agendas of those who buy the ad spaces.
You are up against Pharma via conflicts of interest. The U.S. is over drugged because of legal advertising on radio and TV, most of the world does not allow this. I think though there is more to the story regarding depression in young women other than emotional depth. When women are under long term stress at home, school, with friendships etc...it raises cortisol, which lowers progesterone causing an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, leading to mood swings through their cycles. The dots need to be connected, linking environmental stressors and diet to hormonal shifts resulting in anxiety and depression. Even Testosterone levels in girls vary and will impact personality, energy and emotional expression. Females have a biological clock which ticks in the background exerting pressure to find the right mate sooner rather than later. Marriage is no longer a financial sanctuary for women with kids, so women must have well-paying careers to thrive in cases of divorce, and divorce is rampant. Then there is pornography, where girls never age, and its viewing has been normalized. TV shows throw in the odd joke on the subject as though 'of course pornography is part of a healthy social landscape' when in fact physiologically it has negative effects on the brain, body, marriages, relationships and women's self-confidence. From the perspective of marriage vows, it is cheating on your spouse, and even if the spouse is on board with it, they don't understand the invisible negative effects that really can't be compartmentalized or rationalized away. Young men and young women have been born into a world that has a directive to consume them, body and soul.
You said, "If women's tears aren't symptoms of a mental illness but natural responses, if their mood fluctuations aren't pathology but natural rhythms, if their emotional struggles aren't diseases but growth opportunities, then Pfizer's stock price becomes a problem."
I agree with that to some extent, but I think there's more to it. What if it is not just regular female fluctuations in emotions and a reframing of those fluctuations as pathological, boosted by social contagion? What if it is also iatrogenic injury manifesting in symptoms like anxiety and depression? Two likely culprits: birth control and high-aluminum content vaccines.
Yes, I agree that birth control and vaccine damage may also play important roles. Not to mention the impact of social media.
When we had my children, it was still in the post-Thalidomide era where it was strongly discouraged from medicating the mom unless it was absolutely necessary. There was sanity, in that respect. Now, all of that caution has been thrown to the wind. They give the moms SSRI's, multiple high intensity ultrasounds and numerous vaccines. The kids are attacked even before birth and the onslaught of their own vaccines. This is criminal and the damage is incalculable, but registering in an explosion of chronic disease among kids.
Taking the birth control pill changes hormonal levels which affect the brain. Also, studies show that taking birth control pills long term trigger early menopause. Some women have PMD, and suffer badly, and other girls don't go through such wild swings. So, hormones do play a role, the question is how to balance them naturally, not with drugs.
I find out the hard way that everything in this article is true. But most people don't want to know this truth; they prefer to keep believing that drugs are the answer. When I tell people the chemical imbalance theory is rubbish and has never been proven, they react the same way they would if I openly declared I was anti-vax. The pharma companies have been so successful at selling their narratives, anyone who questions them is suspect.
You are suspect of being actively aware of shared plight :-)
Keep going… I’m noticing the voices gathering.
It puts me in mind of a scene in terminator where the melted metal gathers and forms a body.
I’ve been saying this for years in my small corner of the Earth plain, why are we medicalising normal human behaviour? Is it any wonder that we are sad and anxious given the state of society presently? Slowly I’m seeing the lone voice’s coalescing. The truth will always rise to the top.
Keep going. 👍🏾👊🏼
Welp! You're still standing. Carry on.
I hope it becomes taboo to suggest SSRIs by friends when sharing emotional issues. It is peer pressure suggested by those who know little on the harmful consequences. You may as well be saying to a friend, 'I heard smoking a fag can take the edge off' maybe it's worth a try.