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Dec. 20, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:26
1810 'Sane in an Insane World' - Freedomain Radio Interviews Dr Dan Edmunds

Noted psychotherapist Dr. Dan L. Edmunds offers alternatives to psychiatric drugs.

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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope you're doing very well. I have on the line Dr.
Dan Edmonds.
Dr. Edmonds' private practice of psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and adults is located in Tunkhanock, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Edmonds is one of the few offering a holistic, drug-free, relationship-based approach that encourages self-determination, Autonomy and dignity.
Dr. Edmund's work has focused on drug-free approaches to attentional concerns, what is labeled attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, relational approaches for autism and developmental differences, resolving traumatic stress, assisting troubled children and teens, and helping individuals be able to understand and manage extreme states of mind, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Dr. Edmonds has developed the Northeastern Pennsylvania Autism Acceptance Project.
Thank you so much, Dr. Edmonds, for taking the time to have a conversation today.
Yes, thank you. I noticed in one of your YouTube videos, and I want to make this distinction clear from the beginning, that while you are critical, if I understand this correctly, while you are critical Of medically-based psychiatry, you would not want to be in the same category of what is commonly called the anti-psychiatry movement.
Is that a fair distinction?
Well, to some degree, yes.
I would want to make that distinction.
I believe that there are people who are in distress that are in need of support, so I'm not denying That there may be the need to provide assistance to those individuals.
I guess my issue is the methods of going about that.
I think that oftentimes with the current psychiatric establishment that we have this reductionist idea that everything is purely a result of some type of chemical process.
The whole experience of the individual and just the respect and dignity and the need to build a connection and a relationship with them is not really a part of what is going on with the establishment at the moment.
Right, and from a purely scientific standpoint, there's a great deal to be criticized if not tossed out the entire window of the biochemical model of mental illness because there is in fact, as far as I understand it, there is no physiological test for mental illness and there is no chemical imbalance that is actually being addressed by the medication.
There is nothing that really You can find that it substantiates that, that it's in the idea of theory, but it continues to perpetuate itself because that's unfortunately where the prophets lie.
Now, every generation of psychiatry seems to have had its theory.
Early 1900s, it was improper blood flow to the brain is what was causing these issues.
And you see that it evolved, but What sadly was connected to each of those theories was usually treatments that often were very brutal.
So that's what I've tried to challenge as well.
Many of the clients that I see in my practice are people who have been through the gamut of psychiatric intervention and come out far more damaged.
And so part of my work is, unfortunately, to actually sometimes undo that damage that the psychiatric system has actually evoked upon them, in addition to the traumas that they might have already experienced in their lives.
Right. Now, if I understand this correctly, I mean, I have my own model for mental illness, but since I have an expert on the call, I might as well defer to somebody who actually knows what he's talking about.
What is your approach to the model of mental dysfunction if it's not sort of biochemical or, you know, balancing out the humorous, so to speak?
What is your approach or what do you think is going on when people are experiencing these extreme mental states?
Well, a lot of my focus in the work I've done and what I've written about is that these are not just merely chemical processes.
We have social, political, and familial processes that are going on that pull us in different directions, and people react and respond to that in different ways.
So that's what really has to be looked upon.
Now, what I've argued as well is that the role of the therapist is not just, we have to break down these barriers.
So the role is to make that connection on an equal plane.
But aside from that, also I think the activist role is very important.
That if we were actually out there making the changes within our society that are necessary, if we were alleviating oppression, then the means, the things that would be necessary to provide to mentally distressed people We wouldn't have to be doing this because the things that cause emotional distress wouldn't be there.
Right, okay. So the things that cause emotional distress, I wonder if you could go a little bit more into what you've experienced in your practice as to the source of this.
Well, I have seen individuals where I think that sometimes it becomes Things that originate in the family that are cycles, and it's not to blame the family because I think that many times they're not even aware of some of the dynamics that are going on, but it seems to go in cycles.
So you see these traumas that just continue forward.
I also believe that when we put people in oppressive situations, whatever they may be, it could be A economic situation that I think that this causes great stresses upon people.
So we need to alleviate those sort of things.
But I really believe that the basis for most of what gets labeled as mental disorders is usually centered on some type of traumatic event.
And that's been my experience.
And now, would you say traumatic events or a sort of traumatic environment where there's a repetitive stressors?
I believe it could be both.
Right, right. And can you give some examples of what sort of stressors or traumatic events you feel most contribute towards the development of these sorts of issues?
Usually, well, when I'm dealing with those that are in the more extreme states of mind, what I have found is that usually you have a Initial trauma that happens very early on usually sometimes within the first year of life Then there is a second subsequent trauma which then that's when the onset of Symptoms arise and you begin to see that the person just begin to kind of lose themselves in the process of disintegration of Based on that second trauma that seems to actually shift them back to an earlier state of mind.
So that becomes part of the process as well, is not only to understand their experience, but to also try to move them into a direction where they are able to enter back into that adult state of mind.
Right. And I would assume that we're talking about significant traumas.
And the word trauma, of course, is complicated.
But you're not talking about, I saw my parents fighting.
You may be talking about things like significant sexual abuse.
Right. We're talking about something that's far, far more significant than that.
And usually patterns of communication that are very damaging that just continue to perpetuate.
And this person is usually encountering These things on a daily basis.
So part of what gets labeled schizophrenia and so forth is actually that is a coping mechanism.
It's a way for them to live in a situation which they find basically unbearable.
So they develop that this is a strategy for them basically for them to be able to survive in that circumstance.
Now That's the other thing that I've worked with as well, that I've noticed that many people tend to look at that experience, that if a person is going through some type of psychosis, that this is not intelligible, you can't understand what the person is saying.
But what I have realized is that much of what goes on in this experience is very metaphorical.
So the person may actually be telling you the truth, and it's something about their experience, something about their story, but it becomes necessary to make that connection so that you can decipher what these metaphors might mean.
Sort of like a waking dream, if that makes any sense.
Yes, yes. That is a good example of what I would describe the experience of these individuals to be.
And in one of the books that I wrote, it was interesting how that came about, that a person who had gone through a psychotic episode had written to me and said that most within the establishment had no idea of how to understand or connect with him as to what he had actually experienced.
So he had written a journal during the time that he was undergoing this and asked if I would read through this and give commentary as to what I thought he was trying to say.
So I did that, sent this back to him, and it evolved into a book because he said that what I had written back to was exactly what he was trying to relate.
Most would look at his journal and say, okay, these are just random ramblings, don't have any significance at all.
But actually, if we really examine it, even though it's steeped in this metaphor, it did tell something very important about what his experience is.
And I think that's also part of the problem with the psychiatric establishment, is that it's much easier to To bring someone in for a short period of time and give them a drug and send them on their way than to actually take the time necessary to relate to them as a fellow human being.
I would also argue that it's not just the time within the office that is much more significant.
You really can't see any deeper into other people than you've seen into yourself.
So the amount of self-work, self-knowledge, self-examination that is required to truly help people suffering from a spiritual crisis Absolutely.
I think that's one of the aspects, too.
I look at it, it's a process, a meeting of two persons coming together, trying to lay aside bears, trying to understand each other's experience.
So I sometimes feel that the therapist often has much to learn from the client.
But I think that that is also part of the problem within psychiatry today, is that we have this Imbalance and this abuse of power and I've seen this with many individuals who have come to me where they have been in hospital settings or residential settings and there's always this power and intimidation and I see this as well with families with children who unfortunately were prescribed various psychiatric drugs and Ended up being damaged from them,
having adverse events, and many times the parents, part of the problem was that they had trusted the doctor, that they looked at, okay, the psychiatrist is in this esteemed role, so therefore we can trust what they say, without really looking at all of the dynamics that actually influence psychiatrists today, and many of the conflicts of interest that exist In regards to the pharmaceutical industry.
Right, right. And, I mean, again, I understand that there's sensitivity to blaming the parents, but I think it's probably reasonable to say that parents who have acted in abusive or destructive manners towards their children might also have a special eagerness to look at a medical model rather than look at their own behavior?
Yes. Yes, I do believe that this...
The medical model is something that those unfortunate parents that really don't have the attachment to their children, it exonerates them.
And it also provides the opportunity for various institutions to be exonerated.
If something within, let's say, a child is struggling at school, and maybe there's some change that needs to happen within that academic environment, it's much easier to instead blame the brain of the child and say, well, this child is disordered, rather than to look at, okay, we have a broken educational system and we need to fix that.
Right, or a broken social system as a whole with atomized families, a lack of extended family, a lack of resources, particularly for single parents who are often women.
There's a lot that is contributing to dysfunction in children.
And, of course, if the children have had a negative or destructive exposure to authority in the past, then drugging them and giving them the label of physiologically damaged is, I think, just a tragic continuation of that abuse.
Well, it's certainly a lie that is perpetuated, but if we're looking at everything as simply a chemical process, that this is why people are distressed and all of these things are occurring, then, of course, if that's the case, then we're not going to feel the need to put any energy into making any type of social change whatsoever.
I think I echo that.
It is a terrible tragedy of society that children tend to be the variable that has changed the most when they come up against structures within society that are unfriendly towards their needs, whether it's parents or schools or churches or whatever.
So, so often it is the children who have to change in order to fit into the structure rather than adapting the structure to meet the children's needs, which is truly tragic and I think is going to give children quite a cynical view.
Absolutely. Now, that's been an argument that I've had too as far as what exactly are therapists doing?
And sometimes I see that without even realizing that the therapist themselves is sometimes becoming an oppressor.
That some of the work that you see with some therapists is to simply make the person conform to a environment that maybe could be quite damaging to them or there may be things that are very very wrong with that setting but okay we're going to just have them cope with it and have them conform or worst case scenario to use force and coercion to make a person do certain things so I think that that's what we have to look at,
too, is the idea that we don't want to be in that oppressive role, that we want to be able to look at the person as able to make decisions themselves, to respect their autonomy.
I just want to make sure I understand that last part, if you could expand on it a bit more.
Well, what I'm saying is that we need to respect the autonomy of The client, to respect them as a fellow human being.
But I see so many times that that's not what's happening.
I'll give the example.
If we had a child who, let's say that the parents are fighting with one another constantly and there's all of these dynamics and they live in a neighborhood where they're very impoverished, Some of the role of the therapist would be, okay, well, you just have to deal with that.
That's your lot. That's what you have to deal with.
Cope with it. Rather than saying, okay, what can we actually do with this situation to improve the life of this individual?
And I guess the more important question is, what does this individual want?
Right. And I think that also will contribute.
I mean, one of the things that I think is almost definitional when it comes to mental dysfunction is that there has to have been some trauma that was impossible to change or to overcome.
In other words, if it's coming from your parents and as a child, if you sort of resist or complain and it only intensifies the trauma, then you're in the situation where...
You can't change your environment, therefore you have to adapt to it.
Of course, then if the therapist says, well, you now have to adapt to this other situation called social injustice or poverty, it's further contributing, I think, to that sense of helplessness, if that makes any sense.
Yes, absolutely. The worst case scenario is that if we can't, just by talking to you, change you and make you conform to The way that things are, then we will drug you to make you conform to how we want you to behave.
So it becomes, particularly for children, it becomes a very brutal thing because many times the children's voices are completely silenced.
Now that's been my argument too, that many of the individuals that are going through extreme states of mind that they need, even though this process can be painful and difficult, they need to go through that process and to have supportive individuals around them.
But it seems that the psychiatric establishment, that the goal and objective simply is suppression.
That if a person is going through any type of unusual experience that doesn't fit into a certain category of what someone has defined that it should be, that automatically, okay, we need to make that go away.
We need to shut that down and suppress it.
But as I said, sometimes I think that people need to go through this, be supported, and they can emerge from it And it can actually be something insightful to them.
It doesn't have to be just a breakdown.
It can actually be a breakthrough if the right dynamics are there.
Right, and I suppose that in the psychiatric model, the social environment is generally perceived to be sane, and therefore the dysfunction must be crazy on the part of the person who cannot adapt to the sane social environment.
Whereas, if some skepticism is applied to the possibility Or to the assumption that society is sane, and we can say, well, there are certain aspects of society that are not mentally healthy, then a failure to adapt to that which is not mentally healthy may in fact be a symptom of sanity rather than craziness.
But if you simply say, well, the environment is always sane, therefore a failure to adapt to it is crazy, that's actually kind of like a Soviet model, you know, where if you weren't a good party member, you must be mentally ill, or it's like this 1980...
I know it's not that extreme, but it's like this 1984 model that you must be fixed to conform to the sane and healthy environment because any failure to adapt to it must just be crazy in and of itself.
Right. Absolutely. Now the other part that ties in with that is the idea of what recovery actually is.
That the way that the establishment looks at it is that A person who is a lifelong consumer of psychiatric drugs, who is simply maintained and has a menial job, that's looked upon, okay, well, they're recovering.
But to me, that's not recovery at all.
That a true sense of recovery Would be the person being able to actually emerge from the challenges that they have had with new insights and to feel that they truly have supports.
And there was a study that was done in New York and it was very unfortunate.
They took 9,000 people that were involved in the mental health system And all of them taking psychiatric drugs.
And of them, only five of that 9,000 actually had meaningful employment.
Sorry, not 5%, but five people.
Five people. Not 5%, five.
Wow. Most of them were...
On some type of disability, they were not working, they were maintained on drugs, and they weren't causing, they were not being disturbing to anyone.
So therefore, in the way the establishment looked at it, okay, well, all those other people, they're recovering too.
But were they? And were they truly happy?
Were they truly content?
No, and they were not.
But I think that that's something that needs to be explored further, is really this concept of what does recovery actually mean?
Well, I mean, from other models, it's a challenge, right?
Because, of course, recovery from a broken leg is you can use your leg again as if it were not broken.
That's the ideal functioning. But we don't, I think, have a very good definition in society of what it means to have a not broken mind.
Because, of course, there's lots of things in society that may be viewed from a philosophical standpoint as completely mad.
Things like nationalism or patriotism or the war hunger or that sort of stuff that is considered socially acceptable to the point where people can put bumper sticks on their car proclaiming their love of these things, which philosophically seem quite mad.
And I think that is the real challenge that is bypassed through this medical model.
It's the challenge of examining society from, you know, core principles or first principles and saying, well, where does society as a whole, which is largely inherited and not designed, where does it fit on the continuum of rational values?
We just say, well, society is sane, these people are crazy, they have to be drugged to fit it.
And that results, I think, in having a bad model of what mental health actually means.
The psychiatric model has been heavily criticized for not having a model of what mental health actually means and really creating definitions by which just about anybody could be perceived as dysfunctional.
That's absolutely true as well.
As the DSM has evolved, it started out with around 60 disorders.
Now we have close to 400 and really anyone at any point in time could be Diagnosed with something.
And it sort of evolved into a modern version of sin.
In, of course, the original Catholic conception of original sin, you were simply born unwell spiritually and you had to be cured.
And if you could define anybody and everybody at some point in their lives or just about at any point in their lives as having a mental problem, it's quite a ka-ching moment for the money machines, if that makes any sense.
Yes. Now...
We could also look at that some would argue, okay, well, if a person is a danger, then somehow we must intervene and do something with them.
But the fact of the matter is that most of the folks that end up in the psychiatric system are not always dangerous.
And if we were to make that argument, I believe that we could find plenty of people who are our political leaders that are probably far more dangerous than anyone who is probably sitting in a mental hospital.
Well, I mean, somebody who orders the illegal invasion of another country is, to my mind, spiritually and mentally ill beyond words, whereas somebody who is protesting that and may get in trouble with the law, you could say, is far healthier from a moral standpoint.
So these kinds of questions and recalibrations, I think, are very fundamentally opposed by the psychiatric view.
It's very anti-philosophical because It says what is is healthy and what doesn't conform to it is problematic.
That stops us from asking the questions about the sanity of the environment that we place particularly children in.
So I think that we have to look at that psychiatry really is not a branch of medicine.
It's really a branch of the law in social control.
It's under the guise of medicine, but that's not really what it is.
And there isn't a general skepticism in society about it.
I mean, if I have, I don't know, some infection, I go to my doctor and she says, you know, have some medicine, I don't sit there and say, oh yeah, well show me the studies.
I just kind of accept because I can assume that that kind of medicine is pretty well proven and I think with good reason.
But that same skepticism does not seem to be very present in the realm of psychiatry.
And that is, I think that's a problem.
In terms of the regulation, it's a huge problem.
Of course, you actually have to prove an illness and then a cure in most areas of medicine, except in the field of psychiatry, where it's, you know, this medical model, this imbalance of chemicals model is just put forward, where there's no, it seems to be virtually no or no scientific proof for it.
There is a lack of regulation, a lack of perception that we're dealing with sort of a voodoo science, if I could use that phrase.
That seems to be changing a little bit.
There does seem to be, particularly with the internet, more resources available to people who are skeptical of the psychiatric model.
What's your view of how generally society is perceiving this approach?
I believe that there is becoming a gradual awareness and that there are alternatives made available.
What I do see that is unfortunate is that it tends to be that those who are wealthy or have the resources are the ones who are able to have the alternatives,
whereas those who are poor, particularly you see with the poor children, they are the ones who are going to be stuck with The toxic psychiatric drugs and basically the treatments or so-called treatments that are not truly helpful.
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, you see that they have various managed care outfits.
If the children or even adults are And they are on some type of a state benefit.
The state basically dictates what type of care that they can receive.
So that becomes a problem as well, that those that are in that particular situation where they're disadvantaged, they're not going to have the access to these alternatives.
They're going to be stuck with what the establishment has laid out for them.
Right. I mean, certainly, talk therapy remains quite an elitist endeavor.
Certainly, I did a couple of years of talk therapy, and it was not cheap, though I will absolutely say it was, without a doubt, the best money I have ever spent in my life.
But it certainly wasn't cheap.
And, of course, as you say, relative to spending 50 minutes, you know, filling in some checkboxes and throwing some pills someone's way, it is much more expensive and much more...
It's strenuous from a spiritual standpoint for both the therapist and the patient as opposed to just this magic wand of the medical model where, oh, you know, I just basically have to get a cast on my brain and I'm all better.
So I think you're right. It does slant towards those who have more resources and that really is tragic because, of course, the people who are the poorest need that kind of help the most and they seem to be getting it the least.
Right, and what I see too happening, particularly with the tie-in with the pharmaceutical industry, is that that's become the basis, is that everything is based on profit.
And to some extent, unfortunately, some within the establishment are profiting off of the suffering of others.
And profiting massively off of the suffering of others.
And that's something that I think needs to be dramatically changed as well.
And that ties back in with my idea of the social problems that are creating and generating distress and I think part of it is the Capitalistic society that we live in puts people into these situations where many are just in survival mode.
They don't have the time to spend with their families anymore.
They're just trying to be able to stay afloat and survive.
And I think that putting people in these conditions, this is why we're seeing so much I also believe that the rise in violence that we see is connected to that.
Plus, I also believe that there's a tie-in with the psychiatric drugs themselves.
During the 90s, this was referred to as the decade of the brain.
This is when we saw an explosion of The use of stimulants for so-called ADHD. We saw the antidepressants booming.
And I believe that we're starting to deal with the aftermath of all of that because many of these drugs do induce violence.
That is something that I was quite shocked.
Literally, my hair went up on my forearms when I first began reading this connection between, say, for instance, school shootings or other forms of homicidal acting out.
And just about everybody who has gone through these rampages has been on psychiatric drugs of one kind or another.
That seems to me something that a society that really cared about its kids, which we of course claim to as a society, and every time you turn on the news, there's some damn report about some common household implement that might be dangerous for your children, and we're worried about lead in paint in toys coming from China, one in a million, and BPA and so on.
And yet, this stuff, which can produce just staggeringly violent outbursts in people, It was not something I was even aware of until I began researching this sort of stuff, which seems a pretty hideous omission on the part of the media.
It most definitely is a terrible omission, but I think it's rather intentional.
Right. I would say that my approach to analyzing this, again, you know, I'm a sure layperson, so take it with as much salt as you want, but I think that the role of the state in funding and promoting this kind of stuff and subsidizing it, certainly up here in Canada, psychiatry is...
It's state subsidized.
In fact, it's state paid for completely, whereas psychology is not.
That slots things particularly towards this.
I also think that when the state is facing highly dysfunctional and rigid bureaucracies within its own environment, I'm thinking particularly with the government run and controlled and funded school system, It would rather, in a sense, promote the drugging of children rather than having the courage, as political leaders, having the courage to take on dysfunctional, non-child-centered educational bureaucracies and institutions.
I think that would go a long way towards changing this kind of stuff.
I think you're quite right to say that families have far fewer resources to deal with problems now than they did a couple of generations ago.
I mean, in the 50s, one parent could work.
I mean, it's not a perfect decade, but one parent could work while the other one stayed at home to raise kids.
Now, I think the majority of parents are both working, which gives them very little time or resources to deal with these kinds of problems, and they think they reach for that medical model almost as a huge sigh of relief.
Yes, absolutely. Now, for people, I want to make sure that you have the opportunity to provide your website and also if there are other resources that you think are valuable for people who listen to this who might want to explore more.
Some of the anti-psychiatry movement does seem to be a little bit on the extreme side, and I'm sure that's true of every...
I mean, it's all a bell curve when it comes to criticisms of any institution.
Where do you think people should go if they have, I mean your website of course, but other places where they could go, where they could get more information about ways to begin to understand the limitations of the psychiatric model?
There's two other organizations that I've dealt with that I think provide very good research.
One is the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, which is basically a coalition of mental health professionals who Sees some of the problems within the system and have had the courage to actually speak out.
The other is the International Society for the Psychosocial Treatment of Schizophrenia.
And this is an organization that looks at extreme states of mind and tries to Find drug-free approaches to helping these individuals that are going through this type of experience.
The other, there is what's known as the Spiritual Emergence Network that was formed by Dr.
Stanislas Groff.
And I think that this is also a very important resource because I think that many Of the individuals that are going through difficult experiences that really it is a spiritual dilemma for them.
And to be able to find the support to go through this and to be able to emerge from it and to continue to have that support down the road.
Well, I appreciate that. And I really do want to thank you for the work that you're doing and the time that you've spent explaining your approach.
I think it's really fascinating.
And some of the experts in the field that I've interviewed recently have truly blown my mind about things that I assumed were more on the medical side have actually been more accessible and treatable by talk therapy.
And I think that's something that I really want people to encourage.
If you're dealing with these kinds of issues, Don't just assume the psychiatric model is valid.
Do talk to a talk therapist, because the talk therapy has actually been scientifically validated as producing significant and permanent improvements in people's state of mind, which the psychiatric model has not been proven to achieve that and is not treating any identifiable medical complaint, at least according to the research that I've done.
So thank you so much for everything that you're doing, and thank you so much for taking the time.
I'll be sure to put your website and the websites that you've mentioned on this recording, and I wish you all the very best.
Hey, thank you very much.
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