Psych Nurse Blows the Whistle on Psychiatry's Inconvenient Truth

What happens when a decorated psychiatric nurse discovers the medications he's been administering for years might be causing more harm than good? David Wayne's world turned upside down in 2017—ironically the same year he won his hospital's Excellence in Nursing Leadership Award—when he read Robert Whitaker's "Anatomy of an Epidemic" and could no longer ignore the troubling evidence about psychiatric medications.

David takes us behind the scenes of hospital psychiatry, revealing how he attempted to create honest educational materials about Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) only to have them rejected because, as his medical director reportedly said, they would "make it too hard to get people on these medications." This stunning admission exposes the prioritization of medication compliance over true informed consent that permeates our mental health system.

The conversation ventures into territory rarely discussed in mainstream mental health circles—how SSRIs not only cause sexual dysfunction but emotional numbing that disconnects people from joy, grief, and intimate relationships. David shares stories of patients who've lost their ability to feel connected to loved ones and even their own life experiences, creating a profound existential harm that goes unacknowledged in medication risk assessments.

Most compelling is David's exploration of metabolic approaches to mental health, including how nutritional interventions have consistently improved both physical and mental health outcomes in ways medication never could. He challenges the simplistic "chemical imbalance" narrative with a more holistic understanding of mental health that encompasses sleep, movement, nutrition, human connection, and purpose—elements systematically overlooked in our quick-fix pharmaceutical culture.

Whether you're a mental health professional questioning conventional practice, someone struggling with medication side effects, or simply curious about alternative approaches to emotional wellbeing, this episode offers a courageous insider's perspective that might just change how you think about psychiatric care. Ready to take back control of your mental health? Listen now and join the growing movement for greater transparency and truly informed consent in psychiatric treatment.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Well, hey, nurses, you've been gaslit into believing the foundation of good mental health is psychiatric medications, but newsflash it's not. We are your whistleblowing shrinks, dr Tara Lynn and therapist Jen, and you have landed on the Gaslit Truth Podcast, and our guest today is David Wayne. Welcome to the show, david.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Hey, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:45

Okay, all right, let's talk about who you are, because your bio is fantastic.

Speaker 3: 0:51

I think you should be a writer, not a nurse.

Speaker 1: 0:54

I love it. This would make me giggle. Okay, so David is a registered nurse. He has a background in hospital psychiatry. He was trained to tell his patients that their depression is caused by a chemical imbalance and that antidepressants are a safe and effective way to treat depression. Ignorance was bliss. Now he knows better. And David screams into the void in a futile attempt to affect systematic change in establishment psychiatry. According to his critics, david is a dangerous anti-science conspiracy therapist with questionable hygiene. He is also the obligatory male nurse on Nurses Out Loud podcast, which we will talk about today. Welcome to the show, david.

Speaker 3: 1:32

Thank you. What's up with the questionable hygiene? That's where.

Speaker 1: 1:35

I want to start oh, I'm seeing it, I'm seeing it.

Speaker 3: 1:38

Go to YouTube.

Speaker 1: 1:39

You can see Dave's questionable hygiene Everybody when we're talking about maintaining adult daily levels of functioning. I can see David does not have it together, so we might have to work on that.

Speaker 3: 1:50

That would be charted in a note somewhere, probably. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Disheveled is there. So I'm afraid you have a psychiatric disorder. Likely schizophrenia or bipolar.

Speaker 2: 2:02

I'm glad for sleeping outside.

Speaker 3: 2:04

Yeah, schizoaffective disorder, more like jen right yeah yeah, okay, shoot, you're right.

Speaker 1: 2:11

You know what? Mm-hmm, yeah, that went down. Look how we did that so quick, so quick look at that. There you go, there's your, there's your seven minutes with a mental health provider in the united states. Appointment done, labeled David. We will get you a medication and move you on.

Speaker 2: 2:28

I appreciate it. I feel seen, so thank you.

Speaker 3: 2:30

You feel seen and so much better, so much better we're happy to have you here, David.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Tell us why you came to this show, why you wanted to come on here, because we're so excited to have you.

Speaker 2: 2:40

Well, I had listened to a few of your prior episodes that really connected with me. The first one was with Kelly Fulcred. That was a great one, and then you had Robert Whitaker on the man Damn it. Bob. I've been kind of following him for years. I refer to him as that bastard, robert Whitaker, because of how he completely upended my life with his book Anatomy of an Epidemic, which is just-.

Speaker 3: 3:08

I think offline you said fucked up my life and I'm like we agree with that 100%. You can't turn back now, no way.

Speaker 1: 3:18

You said in you had told us in your Google forum that everybody feels out right, everyone. Before you become a guest on the show, we get a little bit of information on you and you talk about this like inability to even like read research anymore. Yeah From just like the normal good old, like I would call it, like good feel good. Blind eye of reading research.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Exactly. Oh, look at that study.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Look how great it is.

Speaker 2: 3:42

Yeah, in nursing school we're taught evidence-based practice. I mean, it is the mantra it's just drilled into us, but we were not taught anything about how rampant fraud was. So back in my naive days I would read a study and it's like, okay, this is peer-reviewed, published in a reputable journal, and you could read the conclusions, read the synopsis and be like, all right, I know that now. Cool. And now when I read clinical research, it's like okay, who funded this study? Was there a ghost author? Does their data actually match their conclusions? Is there anonymized patient level data even available for public scrutiny? Who funds the publisher? It's like it becomes paralyzingly complex. You know it's like, well, paralyzingly complex. You know it's like, well, I don't even know. Like, what do I even do with this now? Like okay, now I don't trust anything. How do you even begin to cut through when you, when you've been lied to you, know so profoundly like how do you even begin to know what to trust anymore?

Speaker 3: 4:44

that that's true. That's true. I want to touch on a point here, because there are so many research articles out there that start giving you data that you're thinking, oh, they're going to do it, they're going to go down to this place that nobody wants to hear, and then they will backpedal in the end and I'm like, oh, come on, just do it, just say the thing that nobody is courageous enough to say and they probably can't.

Speaker 3: 5:11

Yeah, they can't, because then they won't get published Right or funded, or whatever it is that they're trying to do. So how long have you been a psychiatric nurse?

Speaker 2: 5:21

So about 13 years now 13 years.

Speaker 3: 5:24

Is this where you started or is this where you migrated to?

Speaker 2: 5:28

It's where I started, but not by my choice. Basically, when I was in nursing school, our senior year people got to pick which unit they would do their senior synthesis on. And I wanted to be in the ER because I had been an EMT, so uh, but nobody picked the psych unit. So I kind of drew the short straw and got placed on the psych unit because nobody wanted to be a psych nurse in my class. So I got. I got placed there essentially against my will and uh, oh, that sounds like a consumer story, oh yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 6:00

Yeah, I was placed under chapter 51 and, uh, you know, brought from the classroom to the psych unit.

Speaker 3: 6:09

And you've stayed I stayed.

Speaker 2: 6:11

It clicked because I enjoyed the patient population and I really enjoyed the other nurses who were drawn into that area of nursing. They were just some of the best people you could ever hope to work with. So yeah, it clicked.

Speaker 3: 6:25

That's awesome. So when you think about that, so you were standard nursing practice right For a long time. When did you pick up that book?

Speaker 2: 6:35

It was about 2017. It was about 2017. And it was kind of multiple things happening at the same time that were starting to open my eyes, and it came at a time that I was kind of at the pinnacle in my establishment nursing career because I had been taking on additional responsibilities. I'd become a charge nurse, I joined just about every committee that existed on my units.

Speaker 3: 7:03

I'd become a committee chair and in that year, in 2017, I actually won my hospital's Excellence in Nursing Leadership Award, so I was like Sounds so familiar, jen, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 7:15

I know I'm like man. Why we all did this.

Speaker 3: 7:18

Yeah, we all did it.

Speaker 1: 7:20

We all did this.

Speaker 2: 7:21

And I was great at my job. I mean, I feel like I can say that and have it, not be arrogant because, hey, they gave me a huge award. But Robert Whitaker's book came into the picture and started me down these rabbit holes and started to read about other things that had kind of been on my radar. Everybody's kind of familiar with OxyContin and just the incredible crimes committed around that drug and the way that people were told, you know, by Purdue that's only about 5% addictive, you know, and they knew that was a lie. And there's, we don't have to go too far in that direction because there's, you know, entire documentaries and things like that out there.

Speaker 3: 8:07

You can go as far as you want.

Speaker 2: 8:09

All right.

Speaker 3: 8:09

Yep.

Speaker 2: 8:11

Well, everybody's kind of familiar with OxyContin. But then you read about things like Vioxx too. Vioxx was pulled off the market right about the same time I started working at Walgreens Pharmacy. I worked in a pharmacy while I was in nursing school and as years went by, more and more lawsuits happened around Vioxx and these revelations came out that were just incredible the way that Merck had intentionally hid cardiac side effects. They knew these cardiac side effects were there and were happening and that they had to hide them in order to maximize their profits off these medications. So things came out like these email chains where they're talking about boy, it's a shame that it's a mechanistic harm that's happening, but man, we're going to make a lot of money, or emails that would. I mean their vice president of clinical research was saying things like hey, I know how to design a clinical study that's going to hide these side effects.

Speaker 2: 9:11

And it's just, it crumbles a lot of different worlds at the exact same time, because a you know, everybody kind of suspects that pharma companies are gonna fudge numbers a little bit to try and get away with stuff, but realizing it was that bad to the point where they were willing to let tens of thousands of people die for profit like that, since that's that's pretty dark. Not just that they would do that, but that the FDA you find out was basically complicit in that. And then the justice system was complicit as well because, ok, they fined them a few billion dollars, but it wasn't as much as their profits and nobody went to prison, I think it's fair to say murdered tens of thousands of people and nobody went to prison. They just had a few billion dollar fine that was less than their profits. Like, how is this our system? How is this acceptable? This is unbelievable. Unbelievable, but it's right there in the court case, yeah.

Speaker 3: 10:14

So is that, when you picked up the book Like I'm trying to get to the part where you're like how did you get that book in your hands? Like what was the deciding moment that you actually even read that book itself?

Speaker 2: 10:26

what was the deciding moment that you actually even read that book itself? You know, I had had some conversations with people and I had seen a Joe Rogan podcast and he had a psychiatrist on there who was talking about some things and I started to fact check some things and it's like, oh, it turns out that that was true, you were trying to fact check him things and it's like oh, it turns out that that was true, and then, uh, you were trying to fact check him to the negative, trying to fact check him to the negative, like that can't be right.

Speaker 2: 10:52

And then it's like oh, okay oh wait yeah, and then, you know, get the book. And even the critics of the robert whitaker book, even the fact checkers with his book, their criticism is basically well, he's not wrong, but he just takes his conclusions too far, you know, and it's like yeah, yeah it's.

Speaker 1: 11:12

it's hard to question. It's hard to question the truth to that book when pretty much I mean, everything he pulled out of there came directly out of their own research. Yeah, you know, the lines are verbatim out of the studies. It's hard to go back and question that. I wonder for you so when you got your hands on that, were there things that you realized after you had read? And we keep saying that so, guys, we're talking about Anatomy of an Epidemic, the book that Robert Whitaker wrote. Once you read it, did things start to click? Did you go back and kind of start to go okay, this is why patients aren't getting better, or these are the lines that I have been programmed to say to people that are actually grossly inaccurate. Like were there these truths that just pop? And then, all of a sudden, these connections were made once you got your hands on that?

Speaker 2: 12:08

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. You know, I went back to my psychiatric nursing textbook and it says in there that people's depression is caused by a chemical imbalance and they'll need to be on these safe and effective medications for the rest of their life. And I even went to my hospital's own patient education resource vendor where we would get our handouts about you know what is major depressive disorder or what is this antidepressant? And I started looking at those, and those also said depression is caused by a chemical imbalance that's treated with safe and effective medications. And I just started clicking around and found out that our vendor was Merck. It was literally Merck.

Speaker 2: 12:48

It was the pharmaceutical company that killed 60,000 people with, with Vioxx, and they were writing our patient education handouts for antidepressants and for depression and for that sort of thing. And so this was all kind of a very painful process as well, because it's like it's your whole worldview is kind of getting shattered to some extent and you have this idea of yourself and you have an identity built around this career that you have, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, this so-called evidence that we've been following is actually a lot of fraud, and it's not just that it's fraud around profit. It's doing a lot of harm to people because, boy, when you find out about PSSD too, and you've been.

Speaker 1: 13:41

Oh, we're going to talk about that today.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Okay, I was hoping you would dive into that a little bit yeah, yeah, um yeah, it's uh, it's just very distressing, it's just very uh. I gosh, you know ignorance is.

Speaker 3: 13:54

I was much happier yes, because I was gonna ask you, jen and I talk about this. We're like I don't know that I could go back into the system, knowing now what I know. I don't know that I can practice back in the system like that. How do know I don't know that I can practice back in a system like that? How do you keep practicing in a system like that?

Speaker 2: 14:11

so what I decided was I am obviously not going to be able to exert systemic change. I'm just a psych nurse from Wisconsin. Who the hell am I? I'm not going to like change how things are run at the FDA. Who the hell am I? I'm not going to like change how things are run at the FDA or anything like that. So, but you know, I I am in a position on my unit where I have a lot of respect and I know all the right people. I can change things locally.

Speaker 2: 14:36

So that's what I decided I would do. I I decided like, hey, we're going to get rid of all this Merck propaganda and I'm going to rewrite all our patient education handouts, because that's the sort of thing that I had done before. So we're getting rid of all this nonsense about the chemical imbalance. We're going to use the latest research. And the lowest hanging fruit I decided to start with was about PSSD, and I was like you know what I'm going to start with this one? This is something that if patients aren't told about this, they are not getting informed consent. So we're just doing a real short, quick patient education handout about the sexual side effects of SSRIs, and I decided to start there.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Can you tell everybody a little bit about that? I think some people listening may not know what PSSD is.

Speaker 2: 15:24

Sure. So PSSD is post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, and what this looks like is it's incredibly common for people to have sexual side effects from antidepressants. In fact, when you look at the number needed to treat, antidepressants are far more effective at causing sexual dysfunction than they are at treating depression. So this is a well-known, very, very, very common side effect. But what many, many people don't know is that this side effect can persist after discontinuation. And of course, we in the mental health establishment didn't know about this for a long, long time, because all the safety studies are done by pharmaceutical companies that don't want to find out about things like PSSD, so they're not studying it. They're putting blinders onto it because knowledge of it could possibly threaten profits.

Speaker 2: 16:19

But there is growing evidence. We know this is a thing. We don't know how many people it affects, but I've talked to multiple people at this point who have experienced this and it is just absolutely devastating. It's just absolutely devastating. It's they. They you take an antidepressant and it numbs you, and for some people the goal is they're dealing with this distress. They're incredibly dysphoric. That numbness is a relief to the despair that they were feeling and they can make some progress in their life, but it also causes physical numbness. For a lot of people it causes genital numbness, and we don't know exactly what the mechanism is that does this, but for some people it does not go away. They stop taking the medication and they are still physically numb.

Speaker 2: 17:13

And they're still emotionally numb too often I mean yes, exactly, it's not just that, it takes sometimes it takes a while to reconnect your head back to your body. Yeah, it's it suffers them from their own humanity. It's, you know, they have the birth of a child and they don't experience any joy. They experience the death of a parent and they don't feel grief. They've just been numbed physically and emotionally.

Speaker 3: 18:37

It's just, it's horrific, and a lot of them end up committing suicide, unfortunately, yes, yes, I mean, I think that's the biggest side effect that nobody wants to talk about, but I, I, we, I want to talk about that, but first of all I want to just and I could be wrong, cause I'm I'm not that adept with PSSD, but is it kind of like a spectrum? Um, because I, I think like just even the thought of sexual desire goes away.

Speaker 2: 19:08

Yes.

Speaker 3: 19:09

Is that part of PSSD I'm going to?

Speaker 2: 19:10

guess Yep Tanking the libido, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3: 19:14

Just that Like it's not even on your mind ever at all and down to you know genital numbness and inability to have sex right or perform Correct. So there's a wide spectrum of symptomology with PSSD. The weird part is I think I'm going to grossly generalize, because I was a woman who probably could have been diagnosed with PSSD when I was using an SSRI. It practically ruined my marriage, but not just from sex, but just from lack of connection. It's not just you don't want to have sex, it's you don't want to connect. There's no who cares at this point.

Speaker 3: 19:56

But I think with women and I think this is a valid discussion if a woman goes to a doctor and says, look, I don't want to have sex, I don't want to connect, I don't want to, whatever, she might get told that that's okay because this is about your depression, not about your sex life, and your husband or partner needs to pipe down over there because it's not about his sex life, it's about your mental wellbeing. Whereas if a man maybe went in to the doctor and said, listen, my penis doesn't work anymore, I can't get an erection, I can't do these things, he might be met with something a completely different conversation, because we look at sexuality very different with men and women. You know, men are the bad guys who always want sex and women it's optional in their life and then, like, pleasure and intimacy are not optional pieces of life, they're actually the human condition. So when we strip people of the very basics of humanity, connection and socialization and just intimate relationships, we've stripped them essentially of their humanity. But I think there's like such a different response with men and women when we come and have that same complaint.

Speaker 3: 21:13

Right, the complaint about sex drive or intimacy or functioning. Not being able to have an orgasm as a woman is very different than not being able to have one as a man. So do you have? Have you noticed that? I know you're, you do more inpatient psych than you know the day-to-day stuff, but do you notice that to be any different? Like, do we treat men and women different when they present with PSSD or any other side effect? Do you see a difference inpatient?

Speaker 2: 21:40

Yeah, I think that's a fair observation actually. Yeah, I do think men and women are treated a little bit differently in that regard, and you know, I have talked to some people who have said my depression was so bad any sexual side effects were worth it.

Speaker 2: 22:00

So, yeah, but it comes down to informed consent, like you have to tell people that this is a possibility and you know if somebody is in an intimate relationship. I think that it's something that they need to know. It's going to impact the relationship, so everybody needs to be informed. That's a foundation of our health care system. Is informed consent foundation of our healthcare system?

Speaker 3: 22:26

is informed consent. So, yeah, you know, unfortunately, I wish we could even, you know, drag that informed consent even deeper, because there are Facebook groups and things around. Ssris have destroyed my marriage and the conversation in there is a lot about lack of intimacy and connection to partner, and I think that could even be part of the informed consent process. Like you may feel disconnected from yourself and from your partner and from your children and from the world eventually. Right, that might be what happens. But, as we know, reading Robert Whitaker's books and things like that like not Robert Whitaker, who's the other guy? Spellbinding guy, spellbind.

Speaker 2: 23:11

Reagan, peter Reagan.

Speaker 3: 23:18

Peter Reagan. Peter Reagan, when you're in the throes of all of that, you don't realize that that's what it is, and we're willing to trade it all out for good mental health. And again, I would argue that disconnection from yourself and from other people is probably not good mental health. And again, I would argue that disconnection from yourself and from other people is probably not good mental health. Right, we know that from COVID.

Speaker 3: 23:32

Absolutely I mean, that's something that we have learned. We know that before that, but that's like a big example of what isolation does to you and lack of connection with people, so it's very interesting.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Yeah, well, and we did.

Speaker 2: 23:52

As I'm sitting over here, are you cutting out? Yeah?

Speaker 1: 23:56

you got a glitch, it's fine.

Speaker 1: 23:57

We did an episode on this, dave, and we talked about antidepressants like ruining marriages and I think people have a hard time wrapping their brain around how that could possibly be. But then when you start to offer examples about PSSD, or when we start to talk about the emotional disconnect that is there even when you have children right and you're, it's just like another day well, it's a Tuesday, I had a baby right or you lose a, have a big loss in your, your life, and you're the stoic one that has no tears and is kind of just numbed out, funeral after funeral. I think that those examples help put that in a realistic place for people and I'm glad we talk about PSSD. I get quiet over here with my fidgets because I'm pretty damn certain that that's something I'm going through right now after 20 years of an antidepressant in my body. But it's a very good thing to talk about because I do believe, even beyond the sexual side effect of this, the disconnect emotionally and the inability to connect in that way with somebody is so numbed out.

Speaker 1: 25:03

And I think people can really resonate with that. I would go so far as to say people who are unfaithful in their marriages or people who cannot be there present with their children. We can trace this right back to SSRIs and what they do, especially for people who have a significant long-term use of those SSRIs. For sure?

Speaker 3: 25:27

Yeah, because I think the conversation is just almost slightly different. If we just focus on sexual side effects, the way words matter, right? If we're just talking about sex, well, I don't care about sex right now, I care about not being depressed. But if we talk about it in a level of intimate connection and connection to self or others, that might be a different conversation. That is still within PSSD, right? Right.

Speaker 1: 25:53

Well, and pharmaceutical intervention is very different as well. So if you're a male who's struggling with PSSD and you go into the doctor to talk to your doctor about this, there is a drug for that, okay, and there's a drug for it, right. And so you're starting to medicate a side effect. If you're a woman and you go in, you're told well, there is no drug to fix that and you might need to go see a couples therapist. That's what I was told, and you're kind of like so then it's an internal problem, that's your problem, right. It's blame the victim, yeah, and there isn't a solution, right. The solution is you've got to go see a therapist because there's something wrong with you.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Versus the solution that's much more acceptable, that doesn't feel so blaming for a man, which is well, here, we can give you something for erectile dysfunction. There's an answer for that here, there's a drug for it. So the way the speech around it is very different too. The solutions are different, which I think is very intriguing too, because there are no drugs that exist out there for women who are struggling with this, like there are for men. There isn't a drug. I asked for it for years. It doesn't exist, right, so it's no, you've got a psychological problem that needs fixing.

Speaker 3: 27:08

They're right. The psychological problem was now a neurochemical imbalance created by the medication that you're on. It's great. That's not how they were looking at it.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Provider herself created it for me and here she is. She can't come up with a solution, but I'll digress from that. But I think it's an important topic to talk about, because something you said to David that I think is very interesting. So now there's more research that's coming out about this, but when you think about the etiology and the start of when PSSD was actually being researched, there wasn't a shit ton of stuff out there on it. Because it's not as though the drug companies are going to go back, and nor did they go back. They did their 45 to 90 day trials at the jump and they were done. Fda approves the drugs. Everybody's happy. We move on.

Speaker 1: 27:52

When you look at PSSD, you have to retroactively go to the end. You've got to go to the people who have been on it for a while. You've got to start to do research around that, and that's not something that they do. Those drug companies aren't going to do research in that way. They research at the beginning, they do their little few months of it and they kick out what looks good after people have been med washed and restarted on medications and it looks good to them. But they don't retroactively go back and go. Okay, we're going to take 5,000 people and we're going to look at the sexual side effects that have happened to them after five years, 10 years, 15 years of SSRI use. That doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 28:33

No, it doesn't. So people end up having to crowdsource everything because nothing within the establishment system is going to help them. So they end up hopefully finding online communities where they find other people who are having similar experiences and they can get some support from them, some peer support and, you know, some problem solving, hopefully. But it's really quite the travesty that that's where we're at, that they have to find online support groups on social media for some of these things, because we know that this is affecting. Yes, I mean we have what 50 million people on antidepressants in the US or something something like that 60.

Speaker 1: 29:12

Yeah 60.

Speaker 2: 29:13

Yeah, that's, that's an insane number, especially when you look at the number needed to treat to even have an effect above placebo. It's like in the latest data I looked at on UpToDate, which is the clinician reference tool, where they kind of have a prescribing algorithm that has all the latest and greatest studies and data in it. Even in that tool it says that the efficacy of antidepressants is about 53% and about 40% of that is placebo effect. So these medications are about 13% effective on average, giving us a number needed to treat of seven. So you have to give antidepressants to seven people to help one. And that is according to data that this is directly from up to date, which looks at every single study in existence. They say that the data is low to moderate quality, medium to high bias and very, very short term. And it's just, it's just incredible. It's just incredible to me.

Speaker 2: 30:19

I we talked about the one of the foundations of our entire healthcare system being informed consent, but the other one is evidence-based practice and it's like you look at the evidence that's out there for antidepressants and it's like I cannot believe how many people are just on this treadmill throwing these out at patients every day Like this is the evidence that you're basing it on.

Speaker 1: 30:43

Okay. So Terry asked you a question earlier and I'm curious. I'm curious, so she asked you about, like, how do you continue to practice in a field when you know that there is, like, all this travesty that's occurring, right? And so you were talking a little bit about the things that you can do to bring informed consent to patients, right, like rewriting these manuals and these learning, training materials, right? I love that, by the way, I do. I do Like I, um, we just had somebody that was commenting online on another episode that we had um, I think it was Nicole Lamerson on, and I had replied to their comment and I said, what my pipe, what these pipe dream things we have, right, like these big ideas, and I'm always like I would love to create a course, a CE course for healthcare providers, that talks all about this, right?

Speaker 1: 31:25

Yes, and the idea of that ever happening is probably very meek, because we're up against a very large guild who would never even allow us to come in and actually, I don't know. Just talk about real research and truth for people to know. Okay, but you just tucked that one away there, david Wayne, because maybe that's something, because what you're talking about is you're rewriting these materials.

Speaker 2: 31:45

I'm very interested in that.

Speaker 1: 31:47

Okay, hey, you start taking that on. You give Terry and I a call. All right, we'll be on that.

Speaker 3: 31:51

Okay, tag us right in. We'll be tagging you in, but what?

Speaker 1: 31:56

I want to know for you then, like, can you tell us? So? Are you like, how do you deal with prescribers Because you're working with prescribers? How do you deal with prescribers Because you're working with prescribers? Who's actually giving these patients the informed consent? So do they come in and they prescribe their medications, and then do you swoop in like Batman later and be like I am David Wayne fly in, and here's David Wayne, and then and then here you come and go.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Let me tell you just a little bit more about these drugs before you say yes. Like, just here's everything you need to know. Like, how are you?

Speaker 3: 32:32

balancing that. How does that go down?

Speaker 2: 32:34

Yeah. So it's tough, right, because a nurse has way less power than a psychiatrist, than somebody who actually has the power to prescribe, and so, as I was working on these educational materials, the first one to go up to our medical director was the one I made about PSSD, and it got shot down. So I was told that it was outside of my scope as a nurse to be working on stuff like this?

Speaker 2: 33:02

not true at all. I had previously worked on other projects very similar to that, so that was just a bogus reason. What I heard through the grapevine is that he said that this education handout will make it too hard to get people on these medications.

Speaker 3: 33:19

They're going to read this and they're not going to start. They might say no. They might say no. Oh, too bad.

Speaker 2: 33:24

So it's like all right, well, this fight's just getting started. And then COVID happened, and then everything kind of went on the back burner. Working in the hospital during COVID so I was having those conversations with patients and telling them more about the medications and by the time they were on the psych unit in the hospital setting it was pretty rare for them to be starting medications unless they were on the adolescent unit. The adults had already been on medications for years. But as I started to have conversations with people about things like PSSD and side effects like that, like it was once the blinders were off, I could I could spot it everywhere, you know. And then my hospital came out with a COVID vaccine mandate and denied my exemption and fired me a few years after they had given me an excellence in nursing award. That's a whole different episode.

Speaker 3: 34:33

Holy crap. This is just kind of a that got me thinking about the people that come in that are already on medications and things. Do you, the people that come in that are already on medications and things? I'm starting to think like this Okay, so if these medications are so fantastic and this is the pathway forward for our mental health care, how come the majority of people who go into inpatient psych as adults are already medicated but are so incredibly sick?

Speaker 2: 35:04

Well, it's their fault, obviously, because they have resistant depression.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Oh, yeah, then they get another diagnosis that blames the victim. Oh, this horrible medication where the number needed to treat is one in seven and that's according to, like really garbage data. Oh, it didn't work for you. Well, that's obviously your fault. So now we're going to give you another diagnosis, and now we're going to start playing with you know, we're going to add an antipsychotic ring, you're going to add a mood stabilizer, because obviously the problem here is chemical imbalance and we just need to give you more medication.

Speaker 3: 35:36

Well, that's true, it is chemical imbalance at that point.

Speaker 2: 35:40

Yeah, yeah, it's so funny.

Speaker 3: 35:42

Funny because it's like you know, the chemical imbalance theory is like somebody who's a virgin to all of this. Then, once you put everybody on these medications, now it is a chemical imbalance problem.

Speaker 2: 35:54

It's iatrogenic harm.

Speaker 3: 35:55

Yes, iatrogenic harm that we've created. So this is where people argue with me. I'm like well, we're not talking about virgin users over here, we're talking about people that have been on, stacked and all these things. That is a chemical imbalance that now needs to be accounted for, which then I do. I want to. I keep thinking about med washing, because I know that so many people go inpatient psych and they get med washed and that becomes their new norm, their new baseline, right In a week, right, or whatever. Yeah, you're laughing, you know what I mean, so can you speak to that a little bit?

Speaker 2: 36:32

I'm laughing and it's just really dark, because when they medwash people, you know oh, you've been on a benzo for 11 years, Well, we're going to do a one month taper and oh look, there's your new baseline.

Speaker 3: 37:09

You are in incredible withdrawal. Or you know same thing with SSRIs. You were on Prozac for 20 years and it's not working anymore. Well, we're going to taper baseline for this person. Oh, you don't need that med anymore. Now you need this one because we've seen your new baseline. Yeah, that's yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:15

That happens a lot. So here's my next question Do you come in like Batman with people and are like, just so you know, this is what's happening to you right now.

Speaker 3: 37:24

You're in withdrawal? Yeah, like you're in withdrawal.

Speaker 1: 37:28

And it could I mean like it could take months or years of that medication being out of your body to actually put you at what baseline actually is.

Speaker 2: 37:39

So, yes, back in 2020, 2021, I was starting to swoop in like that and I was waiting for the day where I was going to be called in for undermining the prescribers on the unit. And then we actually got a new psychiatrist on the unit, a younger guy who was aware of protracted SSRI withdrawal, and he was actually starting to diagnose patients there with it. So I felt a lot of validation about that at that point, like, see, I told you this is a thing and it's happening to our patients, and so was starting to make some progress. But then again, yeah, covid and vaccine mandates and all that.

Speaker 3: 38:20

That's an unfortunate thing. I need to have a whole episode about that. Okay, yeah, yes. So when you're thinking about this personally, so what do you think the true root is of mental health? What do you think it is? Mental illness, I should say not mental health, but what do you think it is?

Speaker 2: 38:41

Well, I think that there's a foundation necessary for every single person to have good mental health, and it starts with you know you've got to get a good night's sleep. Your sleep hygiene starts right away when you wake up in the morning, and if you're not sleeping well, you're not going to have good mental health. There's also an aspect of moving your body and lifting heavy things. You need to get some sunlight on your skin. You need to have good nutrition. I could probably do a whole episode on nutrition, actually Actually put a pin in that one. Let's talk about that one a little bit more. But you also need some human connection and to be part of a community, you need to have some other human beings around you that you connect with and you need to have a purpose, and those things are missing in multitudes for so many people in our modern society.

Speaker 2: 39:35

So many people don't have purpose, they don't have connection to other humans. Their nutrition is just, you know, ultra processed garbage. They're not sleeping, they're not moving their body, they're not getting sunlight on their skin, they don't have a connection to nature. Like, their problem is not a Prozac deficiency, it's all these other things, but the people who prescribe these medications they're like well, it's too hard to get people to change those things. You know, people are stuck in their behavior patterns and I can't get somebody to work out and to clean up their eating, so I just prescribe the Prozac and move on to the next person.

Speaker 3: 40:16

I think as long as we keep saying that people can't and people won't, then we'll stop offering them those actual solutions, right? So I think, like a psychiatrist could be a great project manager of someone's life. Actually, you know, hooking them up with a dietician, hooking them up with, you know, even physical therapy could help someone get moving, there's all these things. He could be a great project manager for people. But instead, well, I can't get anybody. You're right, you, you can't just make somebody do something. But if you prescribe it, you prescribe, if you get put in a referral for a dietician, they'll go put in a referral for PT, people will go Right.

Speaker 2: 40:57

So so there's like yeah, there, there, there could be a great project manager for someone's life're on the adult secure unit, it's 2500, maybe 3000 a day, and it's we think about these people who come in and it's just imagine if you took that money and, instead of putting them in an inpatient setting and starting on meds, you had them attend cooking classes with other people who are struggling and got them doing some goat yoga and other things where they're, you know, actually doing things that help their mental health, connecting with other humans, giving them some structure, giving them some support and validation, like imagine how much better the outcomes would be and it would cost way less.

Speaker 1: 41:59

Yeah yeah, healthcare systems, prison systems, all the above like that. That would gravely change the game. All the money, all of the funding, the tax, dollar money, everything. But that is an idea that, while we're getting closer to it, it's kind of cool. As time is moving on, these ideas are starting to come, I think, into the mainstream a little bit. I think into the mainstream a little bit.

Speaker 1: 42:27

It's an idea that I also believe that there's such a level of ego that gets in the way of even having these discussions with patients from prescribers. There are some providers out there that are really great. They're open to listening. They are open to like when you're even talking about the psychiatrist that you worked with, the younger one who was like hey, here's what protracted withdrawal is, and I think that there's less than more of that, as I think that's the unfortunate part of this as well you can argue with a prescriber.

Speaker 1: 42:57

There's so many people out there and a lot of clients that Terry and I see for deprescribing that have to go in with this suit of armor to try to argue why it is that how they're prescribing is causing harm and how they're trying to get them off of these meds is causing harm, and there is such a level of ego, truly, that gets in the way we worked, we worked with over the years I've worked 15 years, worked with so many psychiatrists in the prison systems and of all of the ones've worked with so many psychiatrists in the prison systems, of all of the ones I worked with, there was one that was open. The rest were. There was this hierarchy.

Speaker 3: 43:33

How dare you? They were at the top.

Speaker 1: 43:36

You are out of your scope of practice. Oh my God, if we had a dollar for every time, we'd be fucking millionaires. We wouldn't be sitting here in this big shit office.

Speaker 3: 43:45

I don't even understand that. Are you practicing medicine by rewriting something?

Speaker 2: 43:50

or by sharing research.

Speaker 1: 43:52

Right. There's this level of an accolade that I have reached, and you cannot threaten that you will never be at that level, and I think that part is really dangerous. Um, I think psychologists are very much so. There's a huge group of them as well that are very much so like that. Um, I find much less of that within, like the social work realm, the therapist realm. I'm not saying that they're not there, but but there's such a level of ego and how do you get past that? It's almost impossible.

Speaker 3: 44:28

David.

Speaker 1: 44:29

Wayne RN, with bad hygiene and two first names.

Speaker 3: 44:31

Who are you yeah?

Speaker 2: 44:32

exactly. Well, it's very ego protective, right? And it's also very distressing to acknowledge that this way you've been trained is actually doing a lot of harm and that these power structures you believe in, you know like, are actually kind of lot of harm and that these power structures you believe in, you know like, are actually kind of full of shit and rife with fraud. That's very distressing, that shatters your whole worldview and that's very painful and part of me understands why people avoid going through that. But it's no, it's no valid excuse. I mean, I get it, but it's no valid excuse because, okay, what's the alternative? You're just going to plot along in your career with the blinders on willfully and hurt person after person after person, ruin their lives.

Speaker 3: 45:14

That you can actually visibly see that this person is injured. Yes, when I see a client who is injured, I can hear it in their voice. I don't even need to see the person, I can hear it in their voice. When I see them, I can visibly see that they are sick, to the point where I feel like I can walk down the street and know who is on a long-term SSRI just by their flat affect and the circles are under their eyes and all this stuff.

Speaker 3: 45:45

And how can you, how can you not see we were assessing people the way they look all the time in practice, and how can you not see that they are visibly sick and not connect the idea that these meds are probably the thing doing it? You know, I, I, I guess I I have such a disconnect with that that you and I are in the same room and we see the same person here and they're very sick. Your answer is give them more. My answer is feed them some good food and get them moving around, right? I don't. How can we see the same thing, right?

Speaker 1: 46:24

This is where David's going to come in with the metabolic mental health.

Speaker 2: 46:27

Well first of all, it's amazing, the people trained to spot cognitive dissonance are completely unable to apply that lens to them.

Speaker 3: 46:35

Oh, my God.

Speaker 1: 46:37

That's not a deliverable.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Metabolic mental health though. Yeah, if you guys want to talk about that, I'm we've got a few minutes left, let's go, yep all right.

Speaker 2: 46:49

So, uh, my wife has an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis. It causes a lot of arthritic pain, especially in the back, and has been on every medication you can imagine for it, including Vioxx back in the day actually, which spiked her blood pressure and almost caused her to stroke out if it hadn't been caught. But anyway, fast forward a couple decades into that diagnosis and there were no real effective treatments. And she saw somebody talking about how the carnivore diet is good for autoimmune disease and, yes, decided what the heck, I've tried everything else, what's the harm in just giving it a try? And so that was five years ago. Now. She hasn't eaten fruit or vegetable or grains in the last five years and she is off all her meds. She's lost about 40 pounds.

Speaker 2: 47:47

Her symptoms are in complete remission and we've started to attend conferences and talk to all sorts of other people who have had similar experiences. They have autoimmune disease that they put in full remission on some sort of low carb, keto or carnivore diet, and their stories are amazing, unreal, and one of the things that comes up over and over it always makes my ears perk up as a psych nurse is. They say you know, I had Crohn's. It was horrible. I started carnivore.

Speaker 2: 48:19

All my symptoms went into remission. I'm off all my meds, oh, and my depression and anxiety went away as well, and it always makes me, you know, pop up like a meerkat, like wait what? And I've, I've heard that from so many people at this point. It's, it's, it's unreal, they're. None of them are changing the way that they're eating because they want to address their mental health. It's always for some autoimmune disease, so there is no placebo effect here. But they notice like, oh, and my mental health has improved incredibly from changing my diet and getting away from sugars and ultra processed foods and all the chemicals and food dyes and that sort of thing. It's just been, it's just been mind blowing to me. So then you know that sends me down the path of reading books like Brain Energy by Chris Palmer or Change your Diet, change your Mind by Georgia Eadie, and I really think that the future of good mental health care is going to have a very large metabolic component to it.

Speaker 1: 49:20

You know and you know what sucks about this and I hope it changes. I really hope this changes. David is people like Terry and I. Okay, we are told you're not a nutritionist.

Speaker 1: 49:31

We are told you're not a nutritionist, you don't get to talk about this. Now we are lucky in the state that we are in because some of the regulations for Wisconsin and what we can talk about within our scope of practice is a little bit better than some of the other states. Because Terry and I had to talk about this, because I'm always like nutrition, nutrition, nutrition, let's go. She's like, okay, well, if you were in a Southern state, these would be off limits for you. You can't talk about this shit as a therapist, right.

Speaker 1: 49:56

Which is ridiculous because that is so interconnected, like all of these autoimmune diseases. Let's start talking nutrition, and a lot of times when we get people, we'll talk about the mental health part of it. It will go hand in hand. It's very rare that we have people that have these autoimmune problems that don't also struggle with anxiety and depression.

Speaker 3: 50:17

Because that's where it comes from Physical pain, anything Physical pain.

Speaker 1: 50:20

That's why they come to us and then you're going through their laundry list of history and there's the medical conditions. Boom, boom. There it is, it pops right.

Speaker 2: 50:34

And there's the Crohn's and all the different things that are there. They just pop right in there and it's like, okay, go ahead.

Speaker 3: 50:43

I was going to say, well, if serotonin is the happy chemical, like all those commercials told us. Why is 90% of it in our gut? Okay, so this is how I started thinking about all of this. What 10, 12 years ago or so it had to be. I lose track of time, but anyway I kept thinking like, okay, so if serotonin is the problem, I was Google searching when the internet wasn't very robust.

Speaker 3: 51:04

How do you make serotonin? How does a body make serotonin? Because we weren't taught that in school. We were not taught how you make serotonin. How does your body do this? Oh wait, newsflash. You know protein is one of the biggest things that you need. And so when you talk about carnivore diet, yeah, no shit. Right, Like, yeah, Go to inpatient psych once. Are they high protein? Are they feeling the high protein? No, they're not. Go to an addiction rehab center once. Are they feeding anybody high protein? No, it's high sugar. So I think, like this makes, why do we just not tell people serotonin and dopamine and all the other neurotransmitters you need are basically made through protein sources, high protein. So just that alone can change someone's life who is eating a low or no protein diet? Right, and we don't have to be a nutritionist to know that Like that should be common knowledge.

Speaker 2: 52:04

It's fat too. Fat has been so demonized, demonized.

Speaker 3: 52:08

I'm a 90s girl. Fat was like no fat, no fat, no fat. That'll change your life, you know. So the other, the other part I wanted to say about this real quick is that you said nutrition isn't brought in for, um, pretty much anything. It are for mental health, and you're right, because I'll get people that come in and on their intakes will be like, what is your number one goal in working with me? And they'll say to lose weight. I'm like well, nutrition is always paired with weight loss and it's never the idea of my nutrition can change my mental health status. Well, if I lose weight I will feel better, but maybe it's because you're changing your nutritional status as well. Right, so nutrition is viewed for it's so hard, especially with women, viewed in a weight loss culture, not a mental health culture, and it certainly hasn't caught up Like nutrition somewhat. For, like heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol, like a lot of times.

Speaker 3: 53:11

You know your providers will say well, change your diet. And that'll be the extent of the advice. But I never hear that in a psychiatrist's office or in a therapist's office or even an inpatient psych, change your diet. Because even in inpatient psych they're not starting to change their diet Like you said, if they had cooking classes or starting to change their diet, like you said, if they had cooking classes or smoothie. I knew, I knew a lady who ran a rehab uh, addiction rehab and part of their program was teaching them how to create nutrient dense smoothies. That was it, because they weren't cooking. So they're like, well, we'll do nutrient dense smoothies, and so that's what they taught them to do and it was great and they all felt better. It was weird, right, that's weird. Weird that you would feel better. So I think if we could get the message out that nutrition is partnered with mental health care and it should be the first thing you look at when someone comes in what's your nutritional status?

Speaker 2: 54:06

Yeah, you talk about low hanging fruit where? That's the lowest risk benefit analysis is just a grand slam compared to starting somebody on Prozac. Yeah, it's their nutrition, but you know you mentioned dietitians and how you know recognize your scope of practice. The dietitians are trained by the big ag companies. You know like their textbooks are written by the people who are selling the Cheerios and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3: 54:34

Well, not to mention talk about scope of practice for a minute. Do you know how many dieticians do counseling for eating disorders? They can do that, but I can't you know. Teach someone how to make a smoothie.

Speaker 2: 54:47

Right.

Speaker 3: 54:49

I mean, it's silly. It is. It's all very silly, it's very silly, but I don't know why. Why do you guys think that people want to believe that mental health is so complicated? This is my conundrum of today. Why is mental health so complicated? The solution is so complicated that nobody wants to do it. I don't view it as complicated, but people do. I don't know. It's less complex to make it a medical disorder than it is to make it a person thing. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 55:25

In that complexity, there's plausible deniability for the predators out there who are making bank off of selling people things like antidepressants or you know complex combinations of medications. So, uh, yeah, if you give people that simple message, uh, and you give them ownership of their own mental health by empowering them to do all these different changes in their life life instead of making them dependent on getting refills. That's why I think this system is the way it is. It's the establishment system, protecting its own validity and shareholder value.

Speaker 1: 56:07

I'm at a point where every time we have a guest, I need to write the word agency on something and just hold it like this and every person we have on hits that

Speaker 3: 56:18

mark.

Speaker 1: 56:18

Somebody, every person on the show has talked about that exact thing and that inner sense of agency and finding that empowerment and what that is, and that's where I think the change really happens for people. I think the change really happens for people Once you find that voice, that understanding, it's almost like this energy that you're given to get curious to question things, to make a change, to do something different, even if it's something small.

Speaker 1: 56:45

It's almost like once you find it, it's there and it's recognizable and you can never unknow it. It's just one of those things. So I'm like I got to write that word and every time I guess I'm just going to hold it up.

Speaker 3: 57:00

Cause. Don't give it away. Yes, do not give your agency away. Yes, all right. Well, I think we need to wrap up today's episode. What do you think, jen? Yeah, I think we're in a good spot, everybody.

Speaker 1: 57:11

So we are the Gaslit Truth Podcast, and you know that you can find us anywhere that you listen to podcasts. We do have a little plug that we need to put in here at the end. For those of you that have been harmed by SSRIs or SNRI withdrawal, there is a call to action that's happening submitting responses to the FDA's MedWatch, everybody. So there's a MedWatch system and we need you to do that. So to make this possible all right, so that they're not ignoring us, I'm going to give you guys a website, okay, and you can submit your story.

Speaker 1: 57:40

I have done this, you can join us doing this. Going to antidepressantinfoorg okay, so that is where you're going to want to go, and then there's a backslash for FDA slash reporting slash program. But if you hit antidepressantinfoorg and you make a couple more clicks, you will get to the FDA reporting program. Go ahead and fill it out. It takes a little bit, but I think that this is another movement that we can all be a part of for those of us who have been directly impacted or indirectly impacted by SSRI or SNRI withdrawal, and actually it doesn't have to be just for withdrawal If you've been negatively impacted period you can go to.

Speaker 3: 58:16

MedWatch and submit your story. So make sure you do that. I believe the deadline on that is October October of 2025. So we've got to get as many people on there as we possibly can. So, yeah, all right. Well, thank you everyone for joining us and thank you, david Wayne Batman, my pleasure.