Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. Have you ever heard of Abigail Schreier. She
is the author of many books. She has been one
of the leaders in the pushback to the transgender insanity
stuff that started, you know, probably about a decade ago.
And I'll pull up the original book that she wrote
and I covered it at the time. I forget the
name of it. But she's got another book out now.
It's called Bad Therapy, published last year, Actually Bad Therapy.
She also runs a sub stack publication and it's called
The Truth Fairy, and she publishes some of her work
over at the Free Press. And she had a piece
the other day headlined stop asking kids if they're depressed.
This has to do with these screening questionnaires, and she
had like she took her kid into the doctor's office
for what was she saying? To middle school age son
returned home from sleep away camp with a persistent stomach ache,
so she took him to urgent care and they have
the kid go to a different room where they asked
the kid a series of questions. She did not she
was not allowed in the room to hear the questions,
but that got her thinking, like, well, what's going on here?
And she went and found what those questions are. And
if you've been to the doctor's office recently, you have
probably been subjected to some form of this questionnaire five
questions In the past few weeks, have you wished you
were dead? In the past few weeks, have you felt
that you or your family would be better off if
you were dead In the past week, have you been
having thoughts about killing yourself? Have you ever tried to
kill yourself? If yes, how and when are you thinking
of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe. So
those are the five screening questions.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Illinois Governor JB. Pritzker, who as Ben Shapiro always notes,
had to be lowered into the event space with a crank,
he signed into law mandatory annual mental health screenings for
all public school children from third grade through twelfth grade.
Mandatory once a year screenings of the like the questionnaire
I just gave you, he said. Illinois is now the
first state in the nation to require mental health screenings
in its public schools. Our schools should be inclusive places
where students are not just comfortable asking for help, they
are empowered to do it, so, she points out here,
You know, empowered to ask for help is quite something
different than being forced to answer a questionnaire. Right, if
basic literacy hadn't already collapsed in Illinois, kids might pose
spirited objections to JB. Pritzker's sales pitch. That's they don't
know how to read so anyway. In fact, far too
many American children in adolescents without debilitating mental disorders have
already been funneled into the slippery mental health pipeline. Her
book Bad Therapy investigated the surge in adolescent mental health
diagnoses and psychiatric prescription drug use, and she says here
many young people without serious mental illness nonetheless spend years
languishing with a diagnosis, alternately cursing it and embracing it,
believing they have a broken brain, convincing themselves that their
struggles are insurmountable. Because of the disorder's constraints, they meet
regularly with a therapist or a school counselor, on whom
they become increasingly reliant. They lose a sense of efficacy,
unable to navigate on their own even minor setbacks and
interpersonal conflicts, They begin courses of antidepressants that carry all
kinds of side effects like suppressed libido, fatigue, the muffling
of all emotion, and even an increase in depression. Anti
anxiety drugs and the stimulants given to kids diagnosed with
ADHD are both addictive as well as ubiquitously abused. So
here's the problem. Kids are, well, let's call it highly suggestible, right.
Impressionable is another word for it. They're impressionable, malleable, stupid, No,
I'm kidding. I'm just kidding that the last one. But
you are. That's why, Like you can put your hands
up over your face and the baby believes that you've disappeared.
Oh my gosh, where are they? That's why you can.
That's why you can play tricks on you know, your
five year old or six year old and they don't
understand where did the quarter go? How did it fall
out of my ear?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: My goodness? Right? So what happens then when you start
putting these suggestions in front of kids, asking them every year,
are you depressed? Now? Were you depressed within the last week?
Have you ever wanted to kill yourself? You've ever been sad?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: You start putting these ideas into their heads every year,
and at some point they may say, maybe I am,
maybe that's my problem. When it's not just like puberty,
you know, and she said, this is especially the case
when psychiatric symptoms are concerned. If you ask a kid
repeatedly if he might be depressed about now? About now?
How about now? Are you sure about now? Are you sure? Well,
you just might decide that he is. If you introduce, oh,
let's just say, at random gender dysphoria, you introduce that
into a peer grip, and all of a sudden, a
swath of seven grade girls are likely to decide they
were born in the wrong body. And by the way,
she wrote about this in that first book, rapid onset
gender dysphoria, where you've got like a friend group, a
clique of like these, you know, teenage girls, maybe like
half a dozen of them and all of a sudden
within a month or two, four out of the six
or all trans Do you know what the likelihood of
that is. I mean, just from a statistical probability standpoint,
it is impossible. That is a social contagion, and young
girls are particularly prone to engaging in a social contagion,
going all the way back to the Salem witch trials
here right, I remember we talked with Bill O'Reilly about
this very thing, social contagion. How it spreads because it
gives them, gives them power, right, it gives them some
sense of identity and belonging. And by the way, we're
gonna have Bill O'Reilly back on the program. He's got
another book. The guy never stops writing books. We're gonna
have him back on the show, like on the fifteenth.
I believe. She says a swath of seven grade girls
are likely to decide they're born in the wrong body.
If you introduce testing anxiety that's another one, or social
phobia or suicidality, and many teams teens are likely to decide. Well,
I got that too. There's a reason that clinicians keep
anorexia patients from socializing unsupervised in a hospital ward why
anorexia is a profoundly socially contagious So this is not new.
I've been equating gender dysphoria to anorexia and the way
that we treat one versus the other. We don't say
lebrate anorexia because we know it's socially contagious. We know
that when one girl does it, other girls then start
doing it too. So no, we don't celebrate, We don't
affirm that kind of delusion. You are not obese. In fact,
you are about to starve yourself to death. That's the
reality of the situation. You're going to starve yourself to death.
You are not obese. So when I was a kid,
my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my
mom and my dad took care of him as he
got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and
not much support for caregivers and family. But things are
different today because of the work of so many people,
including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great
organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a
supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot
to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end
Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year
and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign
up and you can join the team and walk with us.
It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at
alz dot org slash Walk and then you can search
for my team name Pete's Peck. There's also a link
at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the
description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the
Gastonia Walk on October eleventh then, so you can make
a team and join that one too, or make a
donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars.
If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a
bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can
go to alz dot org slash walk for all the
dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's.
Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me?
For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments.
This is why we walk. Doctor Allen, Doctor Alan Francis
is a Duke University professor of psychiatry and the author
of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This
is the DSM for the DISH, widely known as the
psychiatric Bible. And what doctor Francis told Abigail Schreier about
these screenings, these mandatory school screenings for kids that's now
the rule in Illinois, says, it's one of these things
that's great in theory but terrible in practice. Most kids
who screen positive will have transient problems. In other words,
they're just feeling depressed today, they're feeling sad today, maybe
a couple days. This is not due to a mental disorder.
And when then you mislabel the kid, you create a
stigmatization and it subjects them to unnecessary treatments. And then
on the other side, you are misdirecting scarce resources away
from the kidkids who actually need those resources. A certain
amount of anxiety and low mood is not only a
normal part of life. They are almost a signal feature
of adolescence. Except in my case, I was a perfect teenager,
as my parents will probably no problems at all with me,
none handling a mental diagnosis or sorry. Handing a mental
diagnosis to a child or teen can change the way
they see themselves. It could create limitations for what he
believes he can achieve. It can encourage treatment, dependency on
a therapist, and empty out his sense of agency that
he has control of his own life. Right, there is
solid evidence on the harms produced by receiving a mental diagnosis,
harms that are pure tragedy in the case of mis diagnosis.
In fact, she says, there's no proof that mental health
screeners have ever been shown to improve mental health outcomes.
So why are we doing this? Probably the money right,
get kids into the pipeline. What mental health surveys reliably
do produce is false positives. If you do the statistical calculation,
you discover that the false positive rate is about ninety
seven percent according to Stephen J. Morse, Professor of Law
and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Ninety seven percent
false positive rate. Schreyer concludes this piece it's very lengthy,
by the way, if you want to read it, it
is at the Free Press. It's also at her sub stack,
which is called the Truth Fairy. She says, the NonStop
diagnosis and treatment of American care, it hasn't made a
dent in the prevalence of mental illness. In fact, the
two have risen in parallel, so more diagnosis and treatment,
more prevalence of mental illness. They both are going up.
You can't give kids an unhealthy life and expect mental
health resources to fix it. That much should now be obvious.
The vast majority of our kids and teenagers are not
mentally ill, but they are lonely, worried, scared, bummed out.
Schools ought to supply them with reliable bolsters to the
human spirit, like high expectations, greater independence and responsibility. Far
less screen time, far far less screen time. Screen time,
not scream time. That's just comes with the territory being
a teenager. More recess exercise, art, music, involvement in goal
oriented activities that lure them out of their own minds
and force them to think about something anything other than themselves,
which is a long way of saying what guard against narcissism?
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Sunday Tickets, Lash Terms Limited time offer. Abigail Schreyer writing
at The Free Press about stop asking kids if they
are depressed. The NonStop diagnosis and treatment of American kids
has not made a dent in the prevalence of mental illness.
Here's a tweet from Melissa to Pete at or sorry
at Pete callaner. That's the Twitter handle. It's a Pete tweet.
Melissa says, I view the persistent questioning of children whether
they're depressed or not end or suicidal to be forcing
Stockholm syndrome on the kids. Soon they begin to think
maybe I should be depressed or suicidal. Perhaps if the
children could read and write, their understanding of their environment
would improve. Let's start with the basics. That is a
bridge to far Melissa. We shall not teach our children
to read, write, or do the math that will make
them not depressed now but later in life. Tim, welcome
to the program.
Speaker 2: Hello Tim Pete for taking my call. Advise your listeners
that it's not only the persistent questioning of children.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 3: Over a month ago, I had major surgery. Prior to that,
I had to undergo physical exam clearing me for the surgery,
and I was inundated during that with questions about my
mental status and everything in One of them kind of
made me sit up and I said, what kind of
a questions that? And the guy said, well, you know,
we understand that good searchical outcomes happened most often in
people who have good emotional status. And after I got passed,
I had a series of questionnaires and the questionnaires were
basically one of the questions was has your emotional condition
gotten better or worse in the last year. So it
all seemed to me reading these things they were trying
to somehow check a box where they could warrant sending
me for some kind of psychological mental screening or something
like that to give their psychiatric department a little more money.
But it's not just with questions for children, because they
may take your son or daughter into a room, but
when those questions come to you, you ought to be
able to recognize what they're doing. And I just wanted
to put that out because I haven't had And afterwards,
after the surgery, I had to go to an urgent
care and the same thing happened the same here.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely standard. I've been asked it every time I
go for my physical and they always say the same thing. Well,
we have to ask these questions their standard and then
they usually ask if there's a gun in the house.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, But I just wanted to put that out.
It's not just with yeah ah.
Speaker 1: But the problem is it's the problem is when you
start asking kids these questions, gins they because they are
impressionable in a way that adults are not generally, you
then end up with kids essentially you know you're you're
leading them to the diagnosis, and then that becomes a
lifetime diagnosis. I think that was the point.
Speaker 3: I understand. I understand that Tim.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the call man. Have a great weekend, yes, sir,
take care Christy. Actually, my wife came across this story
about a week ago and I looked into it and
it's related to all of this. Have you ever heard
of the Rosenhan experiment? You ever heard of this? It's
from nineteen seventy three, so between nine This is from
a website called simply psychology dot org. Okay, between nineteen
sixty nine and nineteen seventy two, there was a professor,
a psychiatrist at Stanford University. His name is David Rosenhan,
and he wanted to see if people could get admitted
into a psychiatric hospital and get diagnosed incorrectly. Okay, And
there was a reason for this. So he sent eight
what we call or what he called pseudo patients. Okay,
so they're not really patients, eight people who are seen,
sent them into twelve different psychiatric hospitals without revealing that
to the staff of the hospital. None of the pseudo
patients had any symptoms or any history of mental disorders,
and in all twelve hospitals, the pseudo patients were diagnosed
with a mental disorder and hospitalized every time. In no
instance was the misdiagnosis discovered during the hospitalization. Now, in
some of the stays, the patient observed significant deficits in
patient staff contact. That's an important element here that I
don't know if they were expecting. But then so hospitals
got mad when they found out and he published these
results and they got mad, like well, they presented they
said they were hearing voices, and so of course we
take them in. Of course we're going to treat them.
And what should we turn them away? Why don't you
try it again? And so he did. They did a
follow up study. They said, we're going to send in
more pseudo patients, and you guys need to rank all
of the patients that come in on a scale of
one to ten, right, one or two being least likely
to be the pseudo patient, ten being the most likely
to be the pseudo patient. If you if you thought
somebody came in that was the patient, then you'd give
them a ten or whatever, and let's see the results
on for that part. Staff was aware of the previous study.
Forty one of the one hundred and ninety three patients
got a one or two score, just forty one, so
twenty one percent got a one or two. So they
were it's like three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Like they were giving scores out to like everybody that
came in the door. Do you know how many people
were actually sent in as pseudo patients? Zero? He didn't
send a single one in. But now the hospital's like, oh,
these are plants, these are undercover patients. These are the
pseudo patients. So they're like, oh, yeah, that guy is crazy.
Oh it is, he's not really crazy. We're going to
give him this high score. We think this is the fake.
Not a single one was. The findings provided evidence that
the accuracy and validity of the psychiatric diagnoses or in question.
All Right, you hear me talk a lot about incentives, right, Well,
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Visit incentive trip kit dot com because great trips deserve
even better returns. So it seemed that once people got
diagnosed with an aberrant psychiatric trait in this Rosenhan study
or experiment, which let's be clear, like there's some ethical
questions about how this one was conducted, right, sending people
in pretending to be suffering from you know, hearing voices
or whatever, and then once they're in there, they're like
not all cleared up. But here's the thing. Once they
got in they had this diagnosis, they were unable to
escape the diagnosis despite having dropped the farce immediately upon
their admission. But once they got the label, that's how
the doctors and staff saw them, and anything that they
did then became a symptom of the disorder. The admission
diagnosis seemed, according to Rosenhan quote, so powerful that many
of the participants' normal behaviors were overlooked entirely or profoundly misinterpreted. Right.
Things that were considered aberrant behavior like pacing around or
writing frequently, right, that would have just been boredom had
they been had they not been diagnosed right. Participants also
were not paid any attention by psychiatrists, nurses, or attendants.
At four of the hospitals. Those that were paid some attention,
the average was about six point eight minutes a day.
So stamps overwhelming avoidance of the patients resulted in an
overwhelming sense of powerlessness which invades the individual as he
is continually exposed to the depersonalization of the psychiatric hospital. Right.
And so this then makes you wonder, like behave are
the patients in these facilities behaving in a way that
is induced by the setting itself because they're being starved
of personal interaction, because they would try to go up
and talk to the staff or the doctors whatever, just
they were directed the by Rosenhuant to try to interact
with the staff and just talk to them like you
would talk to anybody at your place of work, anybody
in your daily life. And they could not get people
to engage with them like that. All right, let me
go to some of the messages here on the email.
This is from Tim who says, routine mental health questions.
I recently went to have my teeth cleaned, and even
they asked those questions. When did this start? And who
is behind these questions? I guess it's like the AMA
or somebody. Yeah, but I remember this started several years ago.
Now I want to say, maybe under Obamacare. I'm going
to go to the text line. Another huge bentness from Chris.
Another huge benefit of shepherding additional folks into the mental
illness pipeline is their potential adult loss of firearms rights,
which is an important pillar in the overall goal of
limiting and eliminating private firearm ownership. It is nearly impossible
to criticize because everybody agrees that actually mentally ill folks
should not be armed in society. Bain draws the parallel
here to that old in school DARE drug awareness program.
Studies showed poor results and in some cases actually increased
drug use. Researcher said the possibility that the program actually
peaked curiosity. John says mental health questions are are now
out of hand, even for adults. If I had a
razor in hand and was ready to end it all,
I'd still answer I'm happy and never felt better. Another
person saying, if they label you, then they can take
your guns. Bill and Florida says, my podcast is still
not updating. When I go to WBT dot com, I
cannot see hours two and three from yesterday. So I
would recommend you get your podcasts from the peatpod dot
com and subscribe there. You can go to that website.
The podcasts are loaded up all the time right there
the peatpod dot com. You can pick any podcasting platform.
The RSS code is the same. You can listen to
it right there on the screen on the website itself,
but the peatpod dot com, and then you can pick
any of these different platforms where the RSS codes may
be available. Because like sometimes the iTunes, one doesn't load
for some reason has to do with their back end
updating processes and stuff. So try that or try to
update the app's I always whenever I run into a
problem with an app on my phone, the first thing
I do is I go to the apps details, the
information you know about the app itself. And if you
have an Android, you just on your home screen. You
just hold your press and hold down the icon for
the app. You just hold it and it'll pop up
a little menu and there's a little thing at the
top there like information, little eye in a circle, and
you tap that, bad boy, scroll to the bottom app details,
click on that, and then it's like update now and
boom hit update. So sometimes it's just an update issue. Hope,
I hope I walked it through that well enough. Thank
you for bringing up this topic. At every single wellness
check for my kids, there goes through or tries to
go through the mental health check. I have to immediately
stop them the second I hear do you sometimes find
yourself sad. Not only is it ridiculous, but it's also
a money grab for doctors. Our insurance does not cover these,
so we were winding up with charges for an otherwise
covered wellness check before we started opting out. That's interesting. Yeah, well,
I mean that is probably part of it too. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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and don't break anything while I'm gone.