Inspire Change SEASON 7-296 Anti-Depressants Aren’t The Whole Answer

This week on Inspire Change, Gunter is diving into a discussion and some blunt truths about why anti-depressants aren't enough.   He will cover how suicide rates are still very high, particularly among men. And now up to 40% of young women are experience anxiety and depression. What is the issue? Are we overprescribin? Misdiagnosis? Too much faith in a single solution? Gunter will dive deep and uncover all of this and offer insight.

This week's gratitude goes out to those of you listening in Nigeria. Congrats to the people of Nigeria particularly our listeners in the Lagos region for getting Nigeria in our top 15 global listeners list and inspiring Positive Social Change.  We thank for tuning in and promoting positive social change.  This makes you a part of Gunter’s efforts in transforming not only men's lives but lives in general and we are grateful you have joined us.  I, DeVonna Prinzi the Co-Exec Producer and our Showrunner Miranda Spigener-Sapon sincerely thank you and ask that you please take the time to like, follow, subscribe, and share as your efforts make a difference to everyone here at Inspire Change with Gunter.    Please remember If you want to share your story of social change, feel free to reach out  to the show directly. Please see the show-notes for our contact information. As always thank you to each and every one of our listeners, but most importantly please keep Inspiring positive social change.

On a side note: Gunter Swoboda and Lorin Josephson's neo-noir/supernatural thriller novel Amulets of Power, Book I A Brian Poole Mystery is officially ON SALE EVERYWHERE you like to get book, but if you want a discount please consider ording direct. ANY LISTENER who order's direct will get a surprise gift. https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=3RoOA6kVQ7ZgmqSK9LdnvNyDAZZFsg9IMaLUaprPgXK

The entire team at Inspire Change with Gunter would like to bring attention to our neighbor listeners to the south of us in Mexico!  Particularly all of you in Mexico City for this week's gratitude journey.  Congratulations!!  For the first time you are only 5 spots away from the "Top Ten Global Listeners List" as you made it to #15 .  Thank you/Gracias  to each and every listener.   We appreciate everyone of you and are grateful for your likes, shares, follows and subscribes, but most of all for you continuing to inspire positive social change!

Make sure you LIKE SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW our new Official YouTube Channel of Video Shorts series: https://www.youtube.com/@InspireChangewithGunterSwoboda/videos where we will be adding new videos and content every week from Gunter and our guests.  https://www.youtube.com/@InspireChangewithGunterSwoboda/videos

Gunter Swoboda and Lorin Josephson's new novel Amulets of Power, Book I - A Brian Poole Mystery trilogy.  CHECK OUT the critic's praise:

Editorial Reviews
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, listeners, it's good to siboa here with some exciting news.
We're on the lookout for sponsors to join us on
our incredible journey with Inspired Change with Conta. If your
organization cares deeply about meaningful conversations around masculinity, self development,
and mental health, we'd love to partner with you. Our

(00:24):
podcast has a wonderful, dedicated audience committed to personal growth
and positive social change. By sponsoring Inspired Change with Conta,
your brand will connect with listeners who truly value thoughtful
discussion and support initiatives that promote real transformation. We're incredibly

(00:47):
proud to be ranked number one in Australia and number
five in the USA on feed spots top men's mental
health Podcasts. For more information on how to become sponsor,
please reach out to Miranda Spegner sap On, our showrunner
and executive producer. We'd love to explore how we can

(01:09):
work together to inspire change. Now. Thank you for your
continued support, and let's keep inspiring change together.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
You're listening to Inspire Change, the broadcast that strives to educate, motivate,
and empower men to challenge traditions of masculinity to guide
us through the intricacies and intersections of emotions, relationships, and
male identity is renownced psychologists, author and speaker Gunter Swubota.
This is Inspire Change.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Before I begin the actual podcast, I would like to
respectfully acknowledge the gategor people of the Order Nation, who
are the traditional custodians of the lane on which I work.
I would also like to pay my respects to their
elders past and Presentlcome everybody to another episode of Inspired

(02:02):
Change with Gunter. I'm your host.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Welcome everybody. You're listening to Inspire Change with Gunter. This
is where we take on the tough conversations about self, food, culture,
and the system we live inside. I'm going to swaboter.
I'm a psychologist, author and someone who's spent decades working
with men, women and families trying to navigate what we

(02:26):
call mental health. Today's episode why antidepressants aren't enough and
what that actually say is about the way we treat
or fail to treat psychological distress. So let me start
with the blonde truth. Since the year two thousand, Australia

(02:50):
has seen a massive increase in antidepressant use. We are
one of the world's top consumers per capita. By twenty
twenty two, around one in seven Australians we're prescribed an antidepressant.
But here's the paradox. Despite the pharmacological situation, suicide rates

(03:13):
remain stubbornly high, especially among men and especially among men
who have separated or become divorced. And the other group
is especially those over eighty five. Meanwhile, young women are
experiencing ps psychological distress and rates that we've never seen before.

(03:37):
Up to forty percent report symptoms of depression, anxiety or both.
So we've got to ask the question, what's going wrong?
Is there a situation where we over prescribing, are we misdiagnosing,
or have we simply put too much faith in a

(03:58):
single kind of solution. So on the ground floor, what
does the system look like? Most people walk into the
GP clinic the tired, disconnected, maybe irritable or withdrawn, Maybe
they're overwhelmed. A GP listens, usually briefly, and officer script

(04:24):
for an SSRI selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Now, this, unfortunately
for many, is the entire treatment. It's fast, it's available,
it's subsidized. But what it often isn't is enough, So

(04:46):
let's talk about this issue about serotonin in our culture. Currently,
we've been sold a very seductive idea for the past
thirty years that depression is caused by chemical imbalance, especially
low serotonin. Now here's the problem. The idea has actually

(05:08):
never been definitively proven. In fact, a major review in
twenty twenty two by Montcrief and his colleagues published in
Molecular Psychiatry found no clear evidence that low serotonin causes
depression none. The so called chemical imbalance theory was more

(05:32):
of a marketing narrative than a scientific conclusion. SSRIs don't
work by correcting a known deficiency. What they do is
they alter transmitter activity, yes, but exactly how that translates

(05:52):
to mood improvement is still completely uncertain. Their benefit, for
many appear to come from blunting emotional extremes, not from
restoring any measurable biological balance. Now word of course here,

(06:12):
this doesn't mean they're useless, but it does mean that
we need to be honest. Any depressants are not a
magic bullet, and the way that we talk about them
as if they fix a broken brain is both scientifically
outdated and clinically irresponsible. It narrows distressed down to biology,

(06:44):
It silences the context wherein the person experiences that distress,
and it offers false certainty in a place of difficult truths. Now, again,
we could get into the issue here about placebo and
how placebo can actually work, but that's not the point

(07:04):
in this particular podcast. Now here's what aniturpressants don't do.
They don't resolve childs with trauma, they don't heal broken relationships,
they don't change your job conditions or end domestic violence,

(07:26):
and they don't give you a sense of purpose. In fact,
in many instances, people become emotionally less motivated. What they
do then do is they just might dull the pain
just enough to keep going. And sometimes that's exactly what's
needed in the short term, but too often they become

(07:49):
a long term substitute for care, because real care takes time, money,
and emotional commitment. Now, another issue that arises in this
particular area where we need to really keep a good
look at the factors is that they're are gendered treatment gaps.

(08:15):
And what we mean by that is that there is
a disconnect when we look at things through the lens
of male female Women are much more likely to be
prescribed antidepressants, especially during midlife and following childbirth, but we
need to ask are they being medicated for biological illness

(08:40):
or for the burnout, exhaustion, and emotional labor that come
from being overextended and undersupportive. Men, on the other hand,
are less likely to seek help until they're in crisis.
Their depression doesn't always look like sadness, may show up

(09:00):
as anger, substance us withdrawal, and when they do present,
they are often dismissed or given appill With our further exploration,
we end up over medicating women's distress and under treating men.
Neither approach gets down to the root of the suffering,

(09:24):
so we need to consider this then from a systemic perspective.
Are we actually looking at a systemic problem? I believe
that one of the larger issues here is the structure
of our mental health care system. By and large, we

(09:46):
rely on general practitioners, who often have limited training and
mental health to assess, diagnose, and treat complex psychological conditions.
The other thing is that gps, especially in Australia, are
really stretched when it comes to being able to spend
the time with people. The other problem is that psychological

(10:10):
services are expensive, fragmented, and generally stretched really thin. Like
in my practice, it may take anything between six to
nine weeks to get an appointment. Occasionally that fluctuates, and
my business manager is very very good at being able

(10:32):
to provide people with appointments through cancelations or windows an
opening when it's a little bit slower, but by and large,
that six to eight week period is the norm. In

(10:52):
the community based care, it gets patchy and preventative services
are underfunded. The other models that we have is like
peer led models that do exist, but they also lack
mainstream support, and there's also question about relative training and

(11:12):
experience in those areas. So what happens then in practice,
while we fall back on the script, the fifteen minute appointment,
the chemical intervention, and the illusion of progress. One of
the common things that I hear from clients have been
on antidepressants, especially long term, is that they're actually not

(11:35):
even sure whether the medication is working and if so,
in what way. What I do get is some of
the side effects. And you know, we talk about side
effects with any depressant in the beginning, but some people
experience what they think is their anxiety or depression, but
which is actually an artifact of the medication will and

(11:58):
truly beyond the sixth weeks of the system, their physical
and neurological system adapting. It's a serious thing that needs
to be taken into consideration. It's also something that requires
education both of the professional but also the end use
of the consumer. So what would real care look like,

(12:27):
the sort of care that we could have. Well, the
first thing is that real care is not passive. It's
not simply popping a pill. It's also not transactional. Real
care involves curiosity man, not just diagnosis. We need to

(12:49):
ask the question why is the person suffering, not just
how to suppress it. It explores meaning, It explores memory
and relationships and embody mine. In the early to mid
eighties I worked on a program called Women and Benzebaazepens.
This is before SSRIs became very popular, and one of

(13:10):
the artifacts that we begin we began to identify was
that a lot of women being prescribed benzodazepans and zeolytics
were to women who were in situations wherein their marriage
was problematic. They may have been in a domestic violence

(13:31):
situation or at the receiving end of emotional abuse and manipulation. Now,
the issue was one where the medication allowed them to
tolerate the intolerable. That's true that some of this may

(13:54):
in fact apply now as we're talking about with selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitors, because those drugs do dampen our emotional
reactions down. They do in very many instances, reduce motivation
to change. Again a counterpoint for some people and enterpressants

(14:19):
can be a lifeline, but they should never really be
the only rope that's thrown to them. So when we
talk about good care, we need to have a model
that's integrative medication, when appropriate, psychotherapy that explores narrative identity trauma.

(14:40):
We need also a system that provides some peer support
in many instances. We need better access to housing, income
and community networks. We also need more gender responsive care
that understands the cultural scripts we're all carrying. So what's

(15:00):
the bottom line here, Well, the bottom line is that
we need to treat the person. We don't just need
to regulate their chemistry, the neurochemistry. So what are some
of my final reflections in this department. Well, I'm certainly

(15:21):
not suggesting that we abandoned and indepressants altogether. As I said,
there is a time and place for them, but we
do need to stop pretending that they're a cure for
pain that is often about relationships that is often existential,
like the place that I exist in in terms of

(15:41):
purpose and meaning, and that in many instances is systemic.
When your boss is an asshole, of course you're going
to react emotionally. When the system that you're trying to
exist in is one that's highly stressful and monstrably problematic,

(16:02):
Medication isn't going to help. We need to stop telling
people that their sadness is just a glitch in serotonin,
nothing further from the truth. We need to start asking
how our culture, our economy, our gender norms, in our
broken systems are making people sick. Let me reference again

(16:24):
Garble Mattes book, The Myth of Normal. We also need
to start building spaces both clinical and cultural we're healing
can actually take place, and healing takes not just a
time in space, but it needs time period. Healing doesn't

(16:45):
come in a capsule. The real healing comes from connection
with each other, in being seen and being heard, being
given that time, space and support to make meaning out
of our suffering. So there's a lot more than I

(17:07):
can say in this area. I want you to think
about this. I want people to honestly reflect on what
they're told is the truth, because some of what we're
told is a mythology is not truth. So if this

(17:32):
episode challenge something for you or clarified something you've always felt,
share it, Start a conversation, ask better questions, especially from
treatment providers, GPS, doctor psychiatrists, psychologists. Listen more deeply, and

(17:56):
remember the answers don't always lie in biology. That is
the reductionist idea that somehow the smallest focus on the
smallest aspect of our being is going to create changes
to the whole. The reality is that sometimes they lie

(18:16):
in the story. So until next time, stay grounded, stay engaged,
and keep challenging the narratives that keep us small, disempowered,
and stuck. I'm going to pick up with this particular
topic in the next podcast, which essentially is the politics

(18:39):
of the brain in mental health. And until next time,
this is me signing off.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Love to hear from you, and if you're interested, please
check out my.

Speaker 5 (18:52):
Work on www dot govoter dot com or www dot
Gutman Grit dot com.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Thank you for listening to Inspire Change, a broadcast that
strives to educate, motivate, and empower men to challenge traditions
of masculinity. For more information on the Making Good Men
Great movement, or for individual or group coaching fentships with Gunter,
visit goodmangrad dot com