#671: Are We Medicalizing the Human Experience? with Dr. Roger McFillin

Well, I've sat across from a number of young ladies just like you, maybe 13, 14, 15 years old, who were going through various stages of development or struggling in certain ways.

And the emotions were very intense and emotions that are very intense, you know, require many different strategies or means to be able to regulate that, to communicate what you're feeling and to be able to respond in a way that isn't self-harming.

And every person I've ever worked with over my entire career, there was a reason for what they were going through.

Now, sometimes it is physical.

Sometimes it is something that they're putting into their body or there's a lifestyle or it's an undiagnosed medical condition.

So I don't ever want to I don't want to ever dismiss the fact that sound medical care may be required or sound evaluation may be required.

But what psychiatry has done or primary care has done is they've taken those behaviors or various symptoms and they've labeled it as if it's a medical condition.

And without a lot of time of evaluation at all, not understanding context, the person, they become drug dealers and they are prescribing psychiatric drugs and labeling a mental illness.

And so there's really no justification for giving a 13 year old an SSRI.

There's none at all.

Not scientifically of course, but it also does a lot of harm because it's the complete opposite of what we want to do.

Emotions are energy and they have to move and they're there for a reason and they're to get us on our path.

So they're very powerful and important signals.

And those who are in judgment of those signals or view those signals in itself as dangerous.

or there's an invalidating environment, well, that person is going to enter into a struggle with that in their experiences.

And we see that as a precursor for a lot of problem behaviors, including eating disorders and self-injury.

And the way that you appears to have been treated at that time was it was medicalized.

You were given a drug under circumstances which you could not consent.

and underlies that somehow it increases appetite.

There's no evidence for that, of course.

If someone's struggling with an eating disorder, that's probably multiple problems that are associated with it.

It could be body image.

It could be the developing into an adolescent.

It could be emotional aspects.

There could be trauma there.