Are we all MAD IN AMERICA? with Robert Whitaker, Mad in America Founder and Author

The truth about psychiatric medications is far more troubling than most people realize. In this eye-opening conversation with medical journalist Bob Whitaker, founder of Mad in America and author of groundbreaking books challenging psychiatric orthodoxy, we uncover the deceptive science behind the "chemical imbalance" theory and how it has harmed countless patients.

Whitaker shares his personal journey from conventional medical reporter to psychiatric whistleblower after discovering research that contradicted everything he'd been told about mental health treatments. Most shocking is his revelation that the chemical imbalance theory—the foundation of modern psychopharmacology—was debunked in psychiatry's own literature decades ago. "They knew it wasn't true starting in the 80s," Whitaker explains, "but then they kept saying it because it was a soundbite that made their drugs look good."

We dive deep into the corrupt research practices behind psychiatric drug trials, where exclusion criteria keep 85% of real-world patients out of studies, and "placebo" groups actually consist of people experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Even more disturbing is evidence showing psychiatric medications often create the very chemical imbalances they claim to correct, potentially explaining why long-term outcomes have worsened over decades of increasing medication use.

The conversation takes a powerful turn when we discuss how patients questioning their medications face dismissal and gaslighting from the medical establishment. As therapists who help people safely deprescribe, we share our perspectives on supporting clients through this journey and the pushback we've received for challenging dominant narratives.

Whether you're a mental health professional, someone taking psychiatric medications, or simply curious about the science behind mental health treatments, this episode will transform your understanding of psychiatry and medication. Join us in this crucial conversation about reclaiming patient agency and demanding better from our mental health systems.

Chapters

• 0:42 Introduction and Book Promotion
• 1:42 Meet Bob Whitaker: Medical Journalist
• 5:56 Bob's Journey to Questioning Psychiatry
• 14:57 The Chemical Imbalance Theory Debunked
• 26:31 Drug Trials and Research Corruption
• 34:15 Harmful Effects of Psychiatric Drugs
• 43:36 The Challenges of Patient Agency
• 51:06 Finding Alternative Evidence and Research
• 55:57 Calls for a Paradigm Shift in Mental Health
• 59:47 Conclusion and Revolution from the Grassroots

Transcript

Dr. Teralyn: 0:22

Hey everyone, it's Dr Teralyn here. I'm just going to do another shout out for my book before we start this episode. So check out your Best Brain on Amazoncom. It's there, it's there, and I want to show you chapter nine, page 119. Life is so damn short. Just do what makes you happy and don't forget to shout Jenga when everything falls apart. Jenga, jenga, jenga.

Therapist Jenn: 0:46

Just so everyone knows this is a perfect stocking stuffer, whether it's for a birthday or for Christmas or you're putting together a donation package.

Robert Whitaker: 0:53

Mother's Day.

Therapist Jenn: 0:54

I may have bought five copies already for different things, so get it she did.

Dr. Teralyn: 0:59

She put it in a donation basket for a charity event, which I really appreciate For a charity event.

Robert Whitaker: 1:07

I made a whole brain health basket.

Therapist Jenn: 1:07

The book is in there. It's very versatile it's very good for bathroom reading as well.

Dr. Teralyn: 1:12

And short, so you'll get it through in one fell swoop. All right, thanks everyone. Thanks for your support on your Best Brain. Five-star reviews only, all right.

Therapist Jenn: 1:20

Now on to the show. That's right, okay, everybody. So here we go, super excited about today. Are we all mad in America? Listen, are you gaslit by bad science and bad psychiatry? We are your whistleblowing shrinks Dr Tara Lynn and therapist Jen here with probably the ultimate whistleblowing shrink. Just want to put that out there, and this is a get well, not quite Well, kind of. He's the ultimate whistleblower. Let's say it that way. And this is a gas lit truth podcast.

Therapist Jenn: 1:48

Our special guest today is Bob Whitaker, and he is the author of several books on the history of psychiatry. He's written Mad in America, he has written the Anatomy of an Epidemic and he's the founder of Mad in America, which is like the world's largest platform for science, psychiatry and social justice, and we are huge fans. Welcome to the show, Bob.

Robert Whitaker: 2:14

Well, thanks for having me here. It's a real pleasure and honor, so looking forward to it.

Dr. Teralyn: 2:17

Yeah, yes, this is great, you know, I just have to start this off by saying yes, when Jen and I were coming up with this podcast, what, almost two years ago, Mad at America podcast was our inspiration, and so it was. We were like this podcast is something that we need to lean into and think about it from a different angle, and so your podcast was our inspiration. So thank you so much for that inspiration. You are changing lives, and your book too this one I'm holding it up Madden America book yeah, Because this one changed my life and my practice, just so you know.

Therapist Jenn: 3:00

Yeah, it's all true and actually some of the first like deliverables we ever put out came from this book and, like all of my like highlighting and underline what see the word what on that page. This actually went into some of our deliverables that we were putting out because I kept reading this going. This is what we have to talk about. This is the stuff that matters, and so thank you for this book, bob is what we have to talk about. This is the stuff that matters, and so thank you for this book, bob, and for what you're doing.

Robert Whitaker: 3:30

Thanks for that very nice introduction. It was quite flattering and I just want to say, of course you were recently on a Mad in America podcast.

Dr. Teralyn: 3:37

Yes, thank you.

Robert Whitaker: 3:38

Yes, that was so awesome and I think really one of the things about podcasts are so great. They really do help build a community of listeners, so to speak, and you also sit with the podcast, you know. You sit down and listen to them and it really becomes a great way to sort of, you know, promote a different narrative or reveal how we have been gaslit by psychiatry and so forth. So anyway, real pleasure to be here.

Dr. Teralyn: 4:05

Yes, so I want to get to the meat of you.

Therapist Jenn: 4:10

Meaning like you better clarify that, terry. Yeah, I mean Sorry, just sorry. Let's clarify this please.

Dr. Teralyn: 4:17

I'm feeling a little edgy this morning.

Therapist Jenn: 4:20

I know he might be a silver fox, but you got to get it together here. Okay, all right, all right.

Dr. Teralyn: 4:26

That's funny.

Therapist Jenn: 4:28

We're going to make Bob lose his mind today.

Dr. Teralyn: 4:31

Anyway, so you're a medical researcher, correct, is that?

Robert Whitaker: 4:40

Not really A journalist who's been writing about medicine and science forever.

Dr. Teralyn: 4:46

Okay, a medical journalist.

Robert Whitaker: 4:49

I don't do the original research, but what I do is report on it and dig into the literature, the research literature. But I'm not a researcher myself.

Dr. Teralyn: 4:58

I'm sorry, I meant journalist when I said that I'm starstruck today. I need to get my language together here. Okay, so you are a medical journalist, which I find really fascinating. Can you share with us your kind of awakening moment, because you did traditional reporting right and then something had to have happened somewhere along the way you went what, especially with psychiatry? So I would love to hear that. I think that's an important place to begin.

Robert Whitaker: 5:36

I'll try to be succinct about this because actually it's a journey when you move from where you initially are treating medical doctors, medical researchers, as people on a pedestal, as the fountain of truth, to where, next thing you know, you're saying well, wait a minute, what you're saying to the public isn't consistent with your own science. So really, what happened was this Even when I was doing medical reporting for the Albany Times Union, I began understanding that financial influences were affecting medical research. So that was the beginning of sort of the cataracts disappearing from my eyes. Then I went. I was a brief, briefly, I was director of publications at Harvard Medical School in the 1990s and this was a time when they started talking a lot about well, we have to do evidence-based medicine, and the idea with evidence-based medicine is doctors can be deluded about their merits of their therapies based on their own impressions. So there's a sense that science might be a corrective to the narrative that you've been told and you've been listened to. Anyway, then next thing was I co-founded a publishing company that looked at the business of clinical trials, you know, doing trials of new drugs and very quickly I began writing about how academic psychiatry was being compromised. Pharmaceutical companies were giving money to academic faculty academic psychiatrists. They were serving as the authors, studies were being spun, adverse events were being hidden, and so that really alerted me to the sense of corruption that was present in psychiatry. Now it was also starting to become present in other areas of medicine, but psychiatry was really the child, really the poster child, of this problem.

Robert Whitaker: 7:27

And then, finally, I did a series for the Boston Globe on abuses of patients in psychiatric research. And now at this time I still believed the chemical imbalance story. I still believed that, for example, they had found that too much dopamine was the cause of schizophrenia and therefore that's why you needed antipsychotics, because they block dopamine. Okay, and that was actually the foil for one of this four-part series. We said look, it's awful when you do studies where you withdraw patients from antipsychotics, because you would never do this with a diabetic. You would never withdraw insulin from a diabetic to see if they became sick again. But so why are you doing it with schizophrenia patients? The point of this is that I think is important for your readers.

Robert Whitaker: 8:14

I began as a believer in the narrative of progress represented by the chemical imbalance, but I had these other sort of skepticism that was beginning to enter my thinking. And then, while doing those series, I came upon two studies that really launched me into this long history of writing critically about psychiatry. One was a study by Harvard researchers who said that schizophrenia outcomes, rather than improving, over the last 15, 20 years had worsened and now they were no better than in the first third of the 20th century. Well, that belies that narrative of progress we're being told. Then I came upon studies by the World Health Organization which compared outcomes in three developing countries India, colombia and Nigeria versus outcomes in the US and six other developed countries. One was two years in length, one was five years in length.

Robert Whitaker: 9:02

The diagnosis was made by Western doctors and each time they find, the outcomes were much, much better in the developing countries. So much so they concluded that living in a developed country is a strong predictor. You won't have a good outcome if you're diagnosed with schizophrenia. So I said, why would that be? And then I read the studies and what they did is after the first such study they said well, maybe the reason for the better outcomes is in the poor countries of the developing countries. Is they take their medications? They're more medication compliant. So they looked at medication usage in the second study and what they found was this In the developing countries they use the drugs acutely short term, but not chronically. Only about 16% were maintained on the drugs long term. And that's what blew my mind, because my understanding was schizophrenia was due to a chemical imbalance. The drugs fixed that chemical imbalance. The drugs were absolutely essential.

Robert Whitaker: 10:02

And yet here was a study, two different studies, challenging that narrative. So, anyway, when, after that series ran, I got a contract to write Mad in America and I began really with this thought is the narrative that we're being told is it true, is it indeed based in science? And if you go forward with that book, it's really about a history of psychiatry telling one story to make itself look good and patients living a very different history. So that's a long winded answer, but I think for your listeners, what's key is I began as a believer, number one. Two, nevertheless, I did think that we needed to go into the research. I needed to go into the research literature to see if what we were being told was in sync with the research literature. So I had a um, I had a, a process to follow as I, I, as I wrote mad in america.

Dr. Teralyn: 12:03

Yeah, yeah, mad in america. The book I have so many. I don't know I'm not conflicting emotions, but I have to be in a space to read it, like I have to be in an okay place to read it. And when I say read it, I usually listen to it on an airplane or taking a walk or whatever. And I had to do it in small chunks because it questions everything that I thought I knew, but I didn't know much. Actually. I think this book should be a requirement for high school psychology class. I think it should be a requirement for college psychology courses.

Therapist Jenn: 12:46

That's the exact same thing. When I read this, bob, I had a couple things pop in. And same thing with Terry. I had such a hard time reading this because it's all stuff I've learned for the first time, and this is after multiple degrees and internships and licenses and years and years and years of practicing and all of the trainings that we have to do in the field as psychologists or therapists and it was like I was learning this all for the first time.

Therapist Jenn: 13:15

And something that really stood out to me in this is that I kept thinking to myself why did I never learn this side of it? It was one of the first times I realized how convoluted and one-sided even the Western education system is, and that really blew my mind because I'm like shit, everything I've learned this was not part of it. Even when we learned about asylums this is not how we learned about asylum living. When we learned about psychiatry trying to bring themselves into the field as doctors and make a name for themselves, which you talk a lot about in this book and the ability to do these crazy ass brain surgeries and craniotomies and all these things we didn't learn any of that. We learned about Phineas Gage and a stupid spike that went through his head and severing a corpus callosum.

Dr. Teralyn: 14:09

She always talks about Phineas Gage.

Therapist Jenn: 14:11

I know and I'm like this is the dumbest shit, because here, like this is we were. I had a hard time with it because this is what actually not a hard time, it was a hard time, but it got me to a good spot where I went. I have to unlearn what I've learned, because I've only learned like this much.

Robert Whitaker: 14:26

Yeah, well, I can understand. I hear this a lot from people. First of all, there is a sense of betrayal. Yes, yes.

Dr. Teralyn: 14:33

Yes, why wasn't I?

Robert Whitaker: 14:35

taught this information. Why was this information kept from me? And I'm investing. If you're a therapist, you're investing your life, your heart, your future in a certain narrative. By that I mean as you're being told as you go to school we do this and it's evidence-based and it's good for people. You're invested in that. And then, all of a sudden, you read Mad in America and you see that that story that you've been invested in is a story told by a guild that is interested all along about making itself look good and making sure that its products drugs look good.

Robert Whitaker: 15:09

And so what they do is they exclude information, they exclude research results that call that into question and frankly tell of harm done. And, of course, the reason they do that because, well, what happens if their drugs are doing harm in aggregate? Well then, what are they left with? So psychiatry gets in this bind where and you can see this through in history whatever they're doing, they're going to say is good. When they were doing lobotomies, after Phineas Gale, the inventor, won the Nobel Prize in medicine, and in 1949, I think it was there was a review published in an American journal said lobotomy can't hurt you. You're either going to get cured, improved or no change.

Therapist Jenn: 15:51

I probably marked that page in here somewhere.

Robert Whitaker: 15:54

The point is when you go to universities and you study, really what you're being told is what the guild wants you to learn in order to move into how they've designed the practices. And then you go into the science literature and there's this whole different story there which actually tells and this arises from like NIMH funded research that tells like, wow, we're probably worsening outcomes, we're doing damage on the whole, on the whole, in the aggregate, we're worsening outcomes. And of course then the biggest thing, I bet you were taught about chemical imbalances as you went right oh yeah, they still are.

Dr. Teralyn: 16:36

I talk about this my son just graduated college and took an intro to psych class or whatever. There was a whole chapter about the serotonin imbalance theory and all of these things and I'm like I said to him. I said don't pay attention to this chapter at all. Like don't, please, don't, please, don't pay attention to this, but it's still being taught in colleges today.

Robert Whitaker: 16:58

Yeah, you know what's so distressing about the chemical imbalance story is sort of rises in 1965 based on an understanding, or at least a preliminary understanding, how antidepressants or antipsychotics act on the brain. So antipsychotics block dopamine. They hypothesize too much dopamine is the cause. Antidepressants they block the reuptake of serotonin, so serotonin is staying in that synaptic cliff longer, upping serotonin activity. So they hypothesize that. Okay, maybe depression is due to too little serotonin. Now here's the distressing part. That's 1965. Now if you start charting now, of course once they have that hypothesis they have to see do people with schizophrenia have too much dopamine prior to going on the meds or do people with depression have too little serotonin? Well, now you can trace it and think about how long ago this is. Take the low serotonin theory, 1973, you get people saying we're not finding serotonin is deficient in depressed patients. In 1983, I think it was, the NIMH does a big investigation of it and says it doesn't look like there's a deficiency in serotonin. Okay, that's 1983.

Robert Whitaker: 18:11

1998, textbook of American psychiatry says this serotonin hypothesis didn't pan out. That's what the textbook says. It says we investigated all these different ways, we just didn't find it. There's no evidence for it. And they even make fun of it in their own textbook. They said there's really no reason that a drugs, that the pathology is going to be the opposite of a mechanism of action of a drug you're using, so it was declared dead in 1998. And you can go forward. And what was American psychiatry telling us on its website, in press releases, in magazine articles? They're telling us we now know that depression is a brain illness caused by serotonin, and drugs fix that. So here's what's so outrageous and why you should be outraged. And frankly, I'm outraged that your son is being taught this nonsense.

Robert Whitaker: 19:11

The profession knew it wasn't true. They knew it really starting in the 80s, but then they kept saying it because it was a soundbite that made their drugs look good and it made it look like they had made all this medical progress, discovering the pathology of disorders. In other words, we had a guild, a medical guild, that thought it was okay to lie to patients, lie to the public and really lie to itself, and even training of young doctors for a while. We're hearing this. Yes, can I tell you one really quick, funny story about this, please? After I wrote anatomy of an epidemic, I was um asked to give a grand rounds at massachusetts general hospital, which was like the number one hot psychiatric department in the country in terms of research funding. Now they invited me to crush me.

Robert Whitaker: 20:03

Basically, it was a setup, one of the things they said. They said you made it, they were lambasting. They said you made it seem like we believed in the chemical imbalance story. They said we knew that wasn't true in 1987, 25 years ago. So why did you lie about us? And I said you know what You're right. So why did you lie about us? And I said you know what You're right. You did know it hadn't panned out in 1987, but I said I think you forgot to tell the public.

Dr. Teralyn: 20:34

Well, this reminds me what was it in 20? Well, was it in 2022 when Mark Horowitz did the meta-analysis paper and said, basically, the serotonin theory. You know, like we knew.

Therapist Jenn: 20:50

Yeah, oh, there goes her volume. Hang on one moment, right when you're asking a great question about Mark and your volume goes out here. Are you back, terry? Yeah, no, she's got no volume. Well.

Robert Whitaker: 21:06

I know what a question I think is going to be.

Therapist Jenn: 21:08

Yeah, I was going to say you could probably answer this before she even gets it all out. So yeah, go ahead.

Robert Whitaker: 21:13

The point of the paper was by Mark Horowitz and Joanne Moncrief. They said we reviewed all the research 50 years of research into this, 55 research and there was never any evidence for a low serotonin as being the cause of depression. So what was the response of other psychiatrists? Well, one of the responses. We've known this all along. So why are you even bothering with this? This isn't news, right, and the public listening to this goes well, it's news to us. Yes, yeah, so that was the.

Robert Whitaker: 21:47

There was various responses by psychiatrists, but they were trying to downplay it. But they made it seem like they had never told the public about chemical imbalances. And yet what we did on Mad in America we just published the list of all the times they said exactly that yes, and that the buses fixed the chemical imbalance. I don't mean to be laughing because, just to finish this up, so many people's lives were changed by that story. They were having difficulty a little bit of things.

Robert Whitaker: 22:16

They go in to see a psychiatrist, or maybe even their general practitioner, because they're told they have a chemical imbalance Of course there was no test which tells them there was something defective inside them and told them that, in essence, they had to take this drug for life. Now, just as we try to understand the morality of this, imagine if you went to a cardiologist and they told you oh, you have a problem with your heart, I need to put in a stent, and you didn't have that problem. What would we say about the cardiologist Quack Do that? Why were psychiatrists allowed to tell people they had chemical imbalances in the brain which required a drug, when they knew that wasn't true?

Therapist Jenn: 22:59

And that is still that narrative. As deprescribers, terry and I are working with people constantly and that's questions that I do ask because it's something that we have to debunk and educate our clients on, because they get curious about getting off medication. But these are the statements that they hinge on, that we have to deprogram for them and then offer some research on, offer them other personal experience on, because they're still being told that. People are still being told that. I had a client this last week who said those exact words to me and I just sit and listen and then I said, okay, let's talk about the other side of this right now. So then we bring that in and they're dumbfounded. It's as if they have learned something that is brand new, even though this is something that has been out for so, so long.

Robert Whitaker: 23:57

It's been out in the research literature. It's been out in Madden America, it was in my books, but the media also betrayed us. Because the media wasn't reporting this. You still heard for the longest time that depression was due to low serotonin. So the media betrayed us as well.

Therapist Jenn: 24:13

Well, and I have to. This leads into a question I have. So this last week or two weeks ago, I rewatched Medicating Normal Okay, and they in that documentary. You were filmed in that. You did a great job, by the way. It looks so good.

Dr. Teralyn: 24:29

I love that film.

Therapist Jenn: 24:30

I know it's so good no-transcript passed on to the people that are conducting the research to approve, et cetera. Can you explain that to our listeners and how this process of research actually works for these drug companies?

Robert Whitaker: 25:10

This is really key because when we talk about the efficacy of antidepressants, for example, what they cite are studies done, funded by drug companies. Okay, yeah, and they last about six weeks usually, and the whole goal is to is to find out if their drug reduces depressive symptoms on a like the Hamilton scale better than placebo. Now, the first thing, even before we get into the corruption studies are designed, are biased by design, to make the drug look good. So, first of all, they use exclusion criteria and about 85% of real world patients can't qualify for these trials. Okay, yeah, so they're a selected group. That's first, first. Second, there's no placebo group in these trials. What happens is you take people you generally that are on antidepressants, or maybe they they have exposure to, but mostly they're on antidepressants. Then what you do is you take take one group off okay, you take both groups off, and then one group you put okay, you take both groups off, and then one group you put back on an antidepressant. After you do like a four-day washout, they call it.

Robert Whitaker: 26:22

So, everybody off. There's even a hope that this will spike depressive symptoms. By the way, yes, correct, that's what you have withdrawal.

Therapist Jenn: 26:29

So yeah, it works great.

Robert Whitaker: 26:31

And then what they do is they take one group after the four-day washout and put them back on an antidepressant, and the other is now the placebo group. So your placebo group is actually a group going through withdrawal. Now the amazing thing is, after, at the end of six weeks, there's actually, in terms of diminishment of symptoms, very little difference between the two. Okay Now, so what happens? So that's the design between the two. Okay Now, so what happens? So that's the design of the trials. Now the drug companies. They've designed the trial. They get the case report forms. They hire people to collect the data and write up reports. Okay, here's what we're going to say. They even have a ghostwriting firm and then they go to their people and the academic people who maybe have supposedly recruited a few patients for these trials and ask them to be authors. And this went on for a long time. And, by the way, those academic people are getting paid now lots of money to be what's called key opinion leaders. They know these people who are at prestigious universities. If they author the articles, they then write about them in the textbook. So antidepressants are effective. They give CEU courses, they speak at the annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association. They help form the opinion.

Robert Whitaker: 27:48

But beneath all this story of the short-term efficacy of antidepressants is a story of biased design, no real placebo group and the results being promoted to the public by academic faculty who were making thousands and thousands of dollars, and sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, to influence opinion among the public. So that was what you see in the short-term studies Now. So in other words, we really can't even trust that these drugs are effective over the short term. But let's even grant that maybe they are. I actually don't. For example, I'll give you one thing real quick when you give antidepressants in real world patients, the response rate is much less, the remission rate is much less than in these industry funded trials dramatically less, which tells you that those trials are sort of an artifact. Then the other part of this is and now you as therapists are seeing this all the time long-term. So many people worsen on these drugs Not everybody, but a lot and in aggregate outcomes over and over again in the studies are worse for the medicated patients long-term than for the unmedicated patients with a similar diagnosis.

Robert Whitaker: 29:09

But we never hear about that research, do we? They don't tell us that research. Your patients don't come in and going like, hey, I just read that very few people stayed well in the largest antidepressant trial ever conducted. Could it really have been? Only 3% were well at the end of one year. They don't know this. They don't know anything about the real world patients. They don't know about the bias design. What they see is oh, the New York Times say antidepressants are effective. 70% of people are in remission after one year, and they say this based on a study that hid the real outcomes. Anyway, this is the point. Sorry, I went on long term.

Dr. Teralyn: 29:48

No, it's just good. No, I'm spellbound by you right now. I'm just going.

Robert Whitaker: 29:53

Corruption in the short term is just part of a larger story of how the public has been misled, about how the evidence is gathered, the role of key opinion leaders and what happens over the long term. And let me now really get on my high horse. They were told that antidepressants fixed the chemical imbalance in the brain. Right, yes, what research showed was that a they didn't have a chemical imbalance before they went on the drug, but the drug because it created it. Yeah, the drug now creates the very thing. So you have a drug that ups serotonergic activity. What does the brain? Brain do? It says uh-oh, I have to maintain a homeostatic equilibrium. It dials down its own serotonergic machinery. And, as Stephen Hyman wrote in 1996, at the end of this process, the brain is now operating in a manner that is both qualitatively and quantitatively different than normal. He was head of the NAMH when he wrote this. Have you had a single patient come in and go, like I know? These drugs induce the chemical imbalance?

Robert Whitaker: 31:00

No, we're usually the ones that are telling our personal stories or educating on that, but no, we don't get patients that come in and then, finally, this is seen as the mechanism, the reason that long-term outcomes are so poor you can actually read in the research literature is inducing a change opposite of what is intended and that may lead to a tardive dysphoria. And, by the way, the latest data shows that 50% of people who go on an antidepressant end up with quote treatment-resistant depression, oh God, as if it's their problem. You know what it was in 1990? 10%. Obviously, what the drugs are doing are inducing a chronic depression in a significant percentage of people. But you guys read Mad in America so you know this and it's coming from the research, but the public doesn't know this.

Dr. Teralyn: 31:58

Yeah, it's really. It's funny because just this morning I had a comment on social media because I did a post about how when I was prescribed it was a preventative for depression, for postpartum depression, I was not depressed. So I'm actually the poster child for becoming depressed afterwards and numbed out and whatever and not starting that way. And so I made a post about it and somebody goes you blamed your husband and then you blamed the antidepressant. Why can't you just accept that you have treatment, resistant depression, you have treatment, resistant depression and I was like or why can't you accept that I was never depressed in the first place and this actually caused a cascade of problems in my life during that time? Like this, is that spellbinding, you know? Wake up call for people? I feel like I'm the poster child for that, because I'm the perfect example of somebody who didn't get on one because they were labeled as depressed, and what it did to me after I should have been in a clinical trial. I was my own clinical trial.

Therapist Jenn: 33:07

Forget doing your original research right. We need to go back and get you in your own little trial.

Robert Whitaker: 33:13

You could be the placebo group and the control group and all the above, but notice the defense of the drugs. There they're discounting your own personal experience. You're not an authentic narrator of your own life.

Therapist Jenn: 33:27

Yeah, you are not at all.

Robert Whitaker: 33:28

Right, yes, how dare I.

Therapist Jenn: 33:31

And that's one of the biggest things when we are talking with our clients about this, how dare I at the Maudsley guidelines and try to help create something for her that's going to work? And the amount of slandering that this girl got online was just unbelievable. And what they don't know is that we put so much stock in her own agency when we started these discussions. How do you want to do this? What makes sense for you?

Therapist Jenn: 34:13

Tell me about your lifestyle, like this drug is here, but we're going to work. It's going to be you that gets you off of this and you're going to pay attention to everything happening in your body and that's going to dictate how powerful this goes and how long it takes. And you know educating on withdrawal and how there's so much misnomer around. You know, because that's the first thing her prescriber said to her is, hey, when these symptoms come back, you know it's because, like, you probably need to go back on, and you know this language that is used around it and it just removes anybody's own sense of agency within the process. And it's the drugs that are the thing that fixed everything and they are the thing that you're going to have to go back on when withdrawal occurs because clearly your original symptomology is back.

Robert Whitaker: 34:59

Yeah, you know what's so disheartening about this? At the heart of good medicine is listening to the patient. That's just it. That's just it.

Dr. Teralyn: 35:07

That would be it right no it's not it is not. That is a lie among. Lies among I'm just kidding, yeah, that is Utopia. Lies among I'm just kidding, yeah, like that is Utopia, it is for sure.

Robert Whitaker: 35:16

And think about with even the literature of antidepressants. Okay, even if you believe it, most people aren't. You know, the majority of people are not responding well to the drug. They're not remitting. The majority are not remitting, which means there's plenty of people who say, well, I'm still depressed, right, well, that actually fits. You say, well, I'm still depressed, right, well, that actually fits. You don't even have to say that the depression to start here is the drugs are causing the chronic depression. You just know that drugs not working Right.

Dr. Teralyn: 35:43

Yeah, I think people innately know when something is not working or not helping and we're led to believe that it's a problem with us. Like well, that's a you problem, you know you need more meds then and you need another med, and you need this and you need that. And if this theory of chemical imbalance and then the answer is medication were legit and it actually worked, we would have solved depression, there would not be depression, there would not be depression, there would not be anxiety. And how in the world does the same medication address anxiety and depression? I don't understand that at all. How does an SSRI address both? What?

Therapist Jenn: 36:28

They should be two separate things Weight loss and weight loss too, and weight loss too Weight loss too.

Robert Whitaker: 36:32

Let's put all the categories in there. An unhappy marriage? It's good for an unhappy marriage.

Therapist Jenn: 36:37

Those commercials, bob, those commercials that were in the documentary in Medicating Normal. That's what the propaganda around you know, the early commercials of these and everything you struggle with as a wife or as a mother within your marriage with your kids, like that is how it was fed to the world Like pain point marketing, and it's genius.

Dr. Teralyn: 37:03

And it works.

Robert Whitaker: 37:04

Because you get on the drive and next you know you're walking on the beach with a beautiful person.

Therapist Jenn: 37:08

you know oh my God, he probably looks like Sean. Connery.

Dr. Teralyn: 37:13

It's okay that your anus is bleeding and you've lost your lower limbs, though, because you're not depressed anymore.

Therapist Jenn: 37:19

Yes.

Therapist Jenn: 37:20

Yes or you have some metabolic syndrome now that is creating such a problem within your life that now you have diabetes and now your blood pressure is tanked and yep, like all of the medical implications that are being tied to not only these drugs but also the removal of them from the body to the these are life-saving, and how dare you talk about something that is saving lives every day and I'm like they're also taking lives every day, whether it's through taking their own life or just taking the pleasure of life away but people can't see that.

Dr. Teralyn: 38:07

They can't see the other side of that at all.

Robert Whitaker: 38:11

You know there's an article that appeared in JAMA, I think two weeks ago. It's written by I think his name is Oker Dost and he's the editor. He's a psychiatrist and he's the editor for psychiatric topics for JAMA and here's what he says, what he confesses to. Now he's going to defend the drugs in here, but he confesses life expectancy and functional outcomes have deteriorated in the last several decades for major mental disorders, including mood disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder. So you just said that the narrative is they save lives. In fact, life expectancy for people so diagnosed has gone down. Yeah, functional outcomes have gone down. Now he admitted that and that's because the evidence of that is overwhelming. I wrote about this in anatomy of an epidemic. Now he tries to say it's not the drugs, yeah, it's just conditions.

Therapist Jenn: 39:15

Other things yeah Conditions of living Right.

Dr. Teralyn: 39:17

It's your lifestyle.

Robert Whitaker: 39:18

But the point is, dr Terlan, you were talking about this narrative that they save lives. It's just not true in the aggregate. Ok, it's just, that's just like an anecdotal thing that gets passed on and you know. Just to go back, why did that patient of yours get trashed online for saying that she had problems? I think you mentioned something like that, right, jen?

Therapist Jenn: 39:39

Yeah, yeah, so she was putting out something to share with. This was in a group.

Robert Whitaker: 39:45

It was in a tapering group.

Therapist Jenn: 39:46

actually, it was in a tapering group and she had put a post out indicating how grateful she was to have met a therapist who also knows deprescribing and can speak this language and also who has personal experience with it. So that to me matters too, and to her mattered as well, because it's not somebody who's just reading out of a manual. And so she was putting that out there to talk about how grateful she is, and that she's done a couple titrations and listed out like the numbers by which she was titrating and she was slandered for that in this community and that was being done wrong and you should really. I hate to tell you, but your therapist doesn't know what she's talking about and this is dangerous. And then also her psychiatrist was saying to her you know, you're going to get worse, your symptoms are going to be bad, you are going to probably have to go back on, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a couple different things there.

Robert Whitaker: 40:40

You know, I just just the reason that made me stop and want to talk about this. It's just so hard sometimes to confront another narrative in this world of social media and because so often your journey is going to get your decisions are going to get trashed. And when we see a defense of psychiatry, defense of the drugs, I think it's because often people are using the drugs, they have to continue to believe in them or or less they're going to think that maybe I made a huge mistake so they have to sort of like attack someone who's making a different decision. I mean I, the nastiness sometimes towards people who challenge this narrative as patients is stunning. It's so nasty sometimes, it's so dismissive and of course it just adds to the difficulty of getting your life back. I don't know how. You know, dr Terland, you felt I mean I'm sure you've gotten some pushback.

Dr. Teralyn: 41:42

That's the understatement of the century.

Therapist Jenn: 41:44

She gets it real hot on social media. I do, I do. It's entertaining for me.

Dr. Teralyn: 41:50

But I'm cool with it because if? Um, but I'm cool with it because if it raises conversation, you know, and I get both sides, I get very encouraging and I get extremely discouraging. But I'm in the middle here now. In the beginning I wasn't. I was more hurt by like oh how can you not see this?

Dr. Teralyn: 42:08

You know, whatever, like it's not me, it's not me. And now I'm like good, let's, let's keep this conversation going. Let's keep this going as long as it's productive in some way. Um, but it's. It's this idea that, um, you know, bringing in the alternative is so hard for people.

Dr. Teralyn: 42:29

I believe now that the people that are saying these things like it saves lives, and how dare you talk about it?

Dr. Teralyn: 42:35

Like they don't believe in informed consent number one, because they think, if you're talking anything negative about an outcome, that that person then won't take their meds and how terrible would that be if they did not take their meds because they decided that these side effects wouldn't be worth risking. And I'm like, I don't even think that's the reality. I think there was some research out there that suggested that the rapport and if you are open and honest with your client, the more likely they are to comply with your treatment recommendation. But anyway, the whole full informed consent thing is no, we can only say the positive stuff about this. But anyway, the whole full informed consent thing is no, we can only say the positive stuff about this. But I firmly believe that the majority of people who are bitching and crabbing on my page and yelling at me are truly the med harmed at this point. I believe that they are so harmed that they can't see outside of it. They're so irritated and irritable and negative and they're the ones who are harmed.

Therapist Jenn: 43:31

And so I'm like they're spellbound right, like Peter Brigham coined right.

Dr. Teralyn: 43:35

They're in that state, so I'm like stick around on my page for a while and maybe that'll help you to see some new things. But I firmly believe that they are the truly harmed ones right now, because how can you not be if that's the way you live your life? But I recognize the negativity because I was there when I was on meds too. So I see them, I see them and I'm like hang out here for a while, let's see if we can do anything.

Robert Whitaker: 44:03

So that's where I'm at right now Thick skin, Thicker skin. I agree with you, by the way. It's so. Much of this outrage is from people who actually aren't doing well and they almost can't bear the thought that they've gone down a medical path that has made life so difficult for them. They have to defend that decision to be on the drug and stay on the drug and stay on the drug. Yeah.

Therapist Jenn: 44:31

I think.

Robert Whitaker: 44:32

Yeah, and that's why they attack people who were saying but wait a minute, look, I'm getting my life back by rejecting this whole narrative.

Therapist Jenn: 44:42

Yes, and that's a hard pill to swallow when it's been part of, like your whole life.

Therapist Jenn: 44:46

Right, and especially with clinicians, because we really love to challenge that with clinicians, because we are taught the opposite. We are taught that there has to be when you were saying, evidence-based right, we like to make fun of that a lot on the show because that was how we were trained the evidence-based gold standard, right, and that's it. That is the level of care we gave. But we were trained that psychiatry and mental health are in a marriage and that is the most effective way to help a patient. And so that narrative right, even for a lot of people, like even clinicians. They challenge that a lot with us because they're still learning it that way. That's how it's being taught to them too, because they're still learning it that way, that's how it's being taught to them too, and so that's a hard thing to get over when you have to sit and go. Yeah, I was taught something that's wrong, that doesn't make sense, or I've hinged my practice on this for 20 years and it's not right.

Robert Whitaker: 45:42

Yeah, one of the most heartfelt things that a psychiatrist told me after she read Anatomy of an Epidemic. She says okay, I think you're right, I think we're doing harm, but now you have to tell me how I go to work tomorrow. How do I save myself? For the past 25 years and now, how can I even exist in a system that's doing harm? I didn't really have an answer, but that was obviously a heartfelt thing. She was saying Her mind was open to it. But now she was saying, like, how am I going to? How about myself? How do I look at what I've been doing for 25 years? I thought I was helping people and this is what I. So it is, and it's easier just to have cognitive dissonance. You know what I mean. Okay, I'm not going to give you this information.

Therapist Jenn: 46:28

Yeah, no, it takes a lot of vulnerability. You know what I mean. Okay, I'm not going to get this information. Yeah, no, it takes a lot of vulnerability.

Therapist Jenn: 46:35

I think one of the harder episodes that Terry and I did on this show was our 30th episode and it was our we called it our dirty 30. And in that episode we listed off the 30 most horrific ways that we perpetuated harm to our patients as therapists, and that was it was sad how easy it was for me to make that list. We each made our lists right and then we combined them and it just flew, it just like flowed out of me. So easy and I sat back looking at this going there's so much harm, I've done so much harm and we openly talk about it. But that takes such a level of humility and vulnerability Because you don't know what's going to come at you after you tell the world something like that on a podcast right, but that's how we did it. And to your point, with her saying to you how do I move on? Right, I think there's a level of humility that you have to get to in your own space and go. This is harm.

Therapist Jenn: 47:34

And we had somebody on not too long ago, nicole Lamberson, and she talked with us about this and she said she goes the most unforgivable thing. It's forgivable when you don't have the knowledge and the awareness and you're taught something and you don't have the other perspectives. But what's really unforgivable is when you now have the knowledge and the awareness and you're taught something and you don't have the other perspectives. But what's really unforgivable is when you now have the knowledge and that there's more to this right than what you were taught, and yet you still continue to operate in the same fashion you did. That's the part that's unforgivable right.

Robert Whitaker: 48:03

That's what she said. There is exactly right. Yeah, when you're provided with other information, you have a moral duty to do what you tell your patients and change your thinking, and what you tell your patients and all that.

Dr. Teralyn: 48:18

So I have a quick question, if my internet holds out, so sorry about that. Everybody. All the research that you're finding, how does the general population find some of this Because, like you said, it's just the high side of things that this is working is readily available everywhere. You see it in pop news too. Right, but how do you go about finding some of this other research on the other side? How do you go about finding that and how do you know the legitimacy of that? I think it's important for our listeners to understand this part.

Robert Whitaker: 48:56

This is really a great question. So even with my first book, mad in America, I put up a website where I had all the citations and links to the articles and so they could see for themselves what I was citing. They could go read it for themselves and they could also see where it was published and these things would be published. They'd see that it was funded by the NIMH or then it was published in you know, american Journal of Psychiatry sometimes, or Archives of General Psychiatry. In other words, they could go to the source information so they could read it for themselves.

Robert Whitaker: 49:32

Now, the one problem with this sometimes is that the abstracts are spun. You have to be able to really get into the like look at tables and the discussion and comments there, because the abstracts are sung. But nevertheless, I did that Now with Anatomy of an Epidemic. Initially I just did the same thing on Mad in America. It wasn't a webzine at this time, but then gradually it did become a webzine and now, for example, we have daily science coverage.

Robert Whitaker: 49:59

There's always a link to the study. So the whole point is we're trying to make available research that never gets promoted by the mainstream media. We review it. We review the methodology, the findings how it fits. And then there's a link Now, often this stuff is behind paywalls.

Robert Whitaker: 50:19

So one of the things we're trying to do is bring that science from behind the paywall and make it available to the public. And then finally you can go on Mad in America and you look at the menu bar and you look at drugs and there's a drop down menu and it'll say like antipsychotics adults or antidepressants adults or stimulants children. And then you'll go there and there'll be a review of the literature. What is the evidence for short term? What do we know about adverse effects? What are the long term studies? And there's links, there's hyperlinks to every study. So what we're trying to do this is one of the reasons for Mad in America is to make access to this research known. That you don't have to believe me, but you can now go read these things. But again, I do want to say one of the small problems is they never confess bad results in the abstract.

Robert Whitaker: 51:12

Yep, no they don't you really have to be good about looking at the tables and they'll make a line, a discussion, that's sort of an admission of harm done, but then they'll move on. Yes, rapidly, but it's there. And can I say one thing? Yeah, in Madden America and anatomy of an epidemic, I don't know how many studies are cited. I think there's over 700 studies cited. Yeah, there's a lot. Do you know? I've never had a single author say I miscited their findings, never, Not once. Oh, and the other thing is they've never said I misquoted them, because I quote them from their own.

Dr. Teralyn: 51:51

Yeah, you do, yeah, you do. I love it.

Robert Whitaker: 51:54

This is what they said yeah, exactly One of the things. Just to finalize this, it's not that there's just like one study that tells this and then there's this other data out there that tells of drugs improving long-term outcomes. When you look at long-term data, it's consistent across different types of studies longitudinal studies, epidemiological studies, studies that are looking about how the drugs affect the brain over long-term and then you'll get researchers saying, uh-oh, I think we're worsening the long-term outcomes. Now, it's never promoted, but it's there, and it's there because, in fact, that's what science is showing us. So, terry, your question is really a good one.

Robert Whitaker: 52:36

How can they believe this information? How can they believe the narrative that we're telling? Well, they can believe it because we have access to all the research that's done by themselves. This isn't research by the critics. This is their research, nih-funded research, and that's what we're making available. It's the best we can do. It's hard for people to switch narratives, but I will tell you. More and more people are switching narratives and two things have happened just on this. A few years ago, there was a meeting in India and I was at. It was an interim meeting and it brought together people from the World Health Organization, united Nations, and I was asked to be a keynote speaker.

Dr. Teralyn: 53:21

Amazingly, was it a setup. That's what I'm just kidding. Was it another setup?

Robert Whitaker: 53:26

No, this was people themselves felt there was something wrong, oh good, anyway. One of the things that came out of that was my talk themselves felt there was something wrong, oh good, anyway. One of the things that came out of that was my talk was we need a new narrative, because not just a critical narrative, but a narrative of what's possible. That would fund up, that would help prompt a paradigm shift. Well, you know what has happened from representatives who were there, the World Health Organization representatives they have now called, sent several documents saying we need a paradigm shift. This biological model really hasn't worked. We need a shift towards environmental care and away from this biological model.

Robert Whitaker: 54:03

The UN Special Rapporteur for Health, who had a representative there, daniels Puras he's no longer, he's finished his term he said we need a revolution, we need a paradigm shift. And the reason is because that's what you find if you're at the World Health Organization, at least in one department, and you confront this research literature, you say this isn't working. We need to be doing something differently. So what I'm trying to tell your listeners is even at very top levels now, increasingly, there's an acknowledgement outcomes have gotten worse. This isn't working. The chemical imbalance story was a fraud and we really need to rethink this whole paradigm of care.

Dr. Teralyn: 54:51

Do you think in the next 20 years, somebody else is going to write another book or you're going to be able to write another book about this and be like what were we thinking in 2025? Do you think that it's going to shift at some point, that we're going to look back on this time period and be like, damn, we just created so many problems. What were we thinking? Do you think that's going to happen in your lifetime?

Robert Whitaker: 55:15

I hope so, and you know, one of the things is, when there are paradigm shifts, you look back at the past and go. What were we thinking?

Therapist Jenn: 55:24

Right, it's always that right.

Robert Whitaker: 55:25

It's always that right. Yeah, it is.

Therapist Jenn: 55:26

Yeah.

Robert Whitaker: 55:27

We got the drugs, we were like what were we thinking when we were, you know, destroying the frontal lobes? That wasn't so bright, but I don't know really. It's just, you know, corporate influences are so big on our lives. Now, yeah, you know, and and and they're. The market for psychiatric drugs just became huge. It is Yep, and it got exported around the world.

Robert Whitaker: 55:49

You know, when we first started medicating our kids, people in other countries said what are you doing? These are just kids. Well, increasingly they're diagnosing their kids with autism, spectrum disorder, adhd. I went to Poland and I was invited to speak in Poland and Slovenia last November and people were telling me all their kids are getting diagnosed with these things. So it's spread. So I wish I could be optimistic. There are a lot of calls now. We need a paradigm shift. There's really a grassroots rebellion and there is this happening in societies. It doesn't work. So your burden of mental disorders, rather than going down, which means a cost, it's going up. So at some point you say we're spending all this money but it's not solving the problem. So maybe we do need to make a change. I hope that happens. But, as you know, politics, economics, influence political decision big time. Corporations have an outsized influence. The pharmaceutical industry has an outsized influence. So I don't know, is industry going to really let go of this model of care?

Therapist Jenn: 57:00

I don't know it would be great to be a part of that revolution. I mean, like, here we are, as like the tiny people you know, trying to do that on our end and helping people and educating them and trying to help them safely get off of these drugs, which is a whole feat in and of itself. Right, there isn't a lot of people out there doing that, you know, but it's growing, which is really cool. But it would be neat to be part of this revolution.

Robert Whitaker: 57:34

You are part of this revolution. You are part of it. That's the point. The Gaslight podcast is part of the revolution. It's a rebellion coming up from the grassroots.

Therapist Jenn: 57:44

It is.

Robert Whitaker: 57:46

You're very much part of it.

Therapist Jenn: 57:49

I guess I want to see more. I would love to just see the big boom, which probably won't happen because, as we know, there are these influences that are pretty. They are so much bigger than us and in fact, they could crush us in a hot second if they wanted to. So I'm kind of waiting for somebody to show up at my door and threaten my life and then I'll be like, listen, I worked at a prison for 15 years, you don't fuck. But then I'm sure at some point, right Like it, I've had people say this to me. They're like you guys are starting to touch on some shit that you need to be really careful with when it comes to big food and big pharma, and I'm like I'm too old to worry about that at this point.

Therapist Jenn: 58:25

All right. Well it's. It's a good space to wrap up and thank you for being here, bob. You've changed so many lives. If you knew how big of an impact you've had on the world, I hope you know, can feel some of that.

Robert Whitaker: 58:42

Well, thanks, it's really been a pleasure being here. I've really enjoyed the conversation, and when I hear words like this, I think, okay, it's worth continuing. Yes, I think that's the important part isn't it?

Therapist Jenn: 58:55

These little encouragements, right, but thank you for being on Everybody, if you've stayed to the end. Here we are the Gaslit Truth Podcast. You can find us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. We are on all the socials and we'd love for you to give us some reviews. And, as Terry said with her book, we only want five stars with our podcast too. Otherwise don't even review, and if you're not willing to think critically or go through that, then I guess we're not the podcast for you. If you want to send us your Gaslit stories, you can email us at thegaslitruthpodcast at gmailcom. Thanks for being on, bob.

Robert Whitaker: 59:24

Again, it was a real pleasure.