Dr. Phil's Philosophy on Depression - "Pain is a Motivator" | Joe Rogan

Well, I hope so. I mean, I think I know that there's a stigma attached to mental illness. And that really bothers me. There should not be. I mean, having depression or anxiety or whatever to me should have no more stigma than having a knee injury or kidney infection or diabetes. But there is a stigma attached to it. And I've tried to talk about this in a way where it's okay to talk about it and not be ashamed of it. It's okay. If you've got anxiety, you've got PTSD, whatever, it's okay. Let's talk about it. Let's get help for it, get it behind you and move on. I mean, it's not something that you should be ashamed of. When you're talking to someone that maybe has depression, do you try to get them to exercise first? Do you try to get them to visit a psychiatrist immediately and get on medication? Do you take it on a case-by-case basis? Well, I do. But you have to approach it. Everybody has a philosophy about it. And I'm not saying that mine's any better than anybody else's, but I do have a philosophy about it. And I'm very slow to medication. I mean, I think you use medication for biochemical replacement. I mean, if for some reason your body is not making enough of something it needs, then maybe you support it short-term biochemically. But I look at depression, there's a lot of ways you can break it up, but I look at it like, is it exogenous depression or endogenous depression? I mean, is it coming from the inside out or the outside in? Is it because you're reacting to something? I see a lot of depressed people that, in a sense, it makes sense. I mean, you look at their life and you say, well, if you're not down about this, you should be. I mean, you've lost your job, you've gotten a divorce, your health is in the shitter, you're, I mean, you should be down about this. It's external things. So you don't need a pill. I mean, put somebody in a chemical straitjacket because their life's falling apart. What the hell is that going to do? That's just putting goggles on them where they can't see it. I would much rather get them to behave their way to success and say, what are you reacting to that you're depressed about? Let's put that on a to-do list and start, like you said, write it down and start crossing those things off. Let's figure what's an action plan to change this, action plan to change the next thing, actually. And then when you start doing that, then you generally see their mood lift. A lot of people that are depressed are just realistically reacting to a crummy circumstance in their life. It's not necessarily a mental illness, it's just a realistic reaction to a bad spot in their life. Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it too, that if you weren't in a bad state looking at this, there might be something wrong with you. Yeah, you're in denial. I mean, if you've gotten a divorce, lost your job, your health's in bad shape, your kids are alienated from you, and you're saying, I'm fine, then you're not in touch with reality. Right. You should be bothered by that. And I think to give somebody a pill to mask your feelings about that just keeps you off task. Pain's a good motivator. I grew up in like Texas and Oklahoma, and I don't know if you've ever done this, but I used to spend my summers in the thriving metropolis of Mundi, Texas. You ever heard of Mundi, Texas? No. It's M-U-N, it's a U, not an O, M-U-N-D-A-Y. It's got like 2,000 people in it. But in the summers, it would get hot in Mundi, Texas. When I say hot, I mean, you look out in the backyard and your dog burst into flames, is what I'm talking about. So we would be going to the swimming pool or something barefooted, and you get halfway across an asphalt road, and you look down and you're, I mean, like, holy shit, I mean, your feet are just on fire. So what are you going to do? I mean, that is painful. You're going to do one of two things. You're either going to make a U-turn and get your ass back over to the side of the road and get in the grass, or you're going to run to the other side and get off the road and get in the grass. But you're not going to stand there in the middle of the road and melt yourself down to the knees. Pain is a motivator. Pain is not necessarily always bad. If you're in pain, it's going to motivate you to move, to change something, and to mash that with drugs, to dull that pain with drugs, is not necessarily a good thing. That is wise, wise advice. And I wish more people thought that way, particularly more doctors. You know, I have so many friends that have gone to a doctor because I'm not feeling so good, and they're almost immediately wanting to throw them on something. Yeah, that's not smart. In all the years you've been doing this, have you noticed, like, was depression as prevalent? Like, the term depression, or was it, it doesn't, I mean, I don't really remember it being a thing when I was a kid that was discussed the way it's discussed now. Now it's discussed the way people discuss all sorts of other ailments. Is it just an awareness thing, or is it just people are thinking about it now in different terms? Well, I think it's part of the narrative now, and I think with social media, with the internet, not just social media, but with the internet, I think there's just a lot more, it's a lot more in the nomenclature, and there's a lot more awareness about it. But I think it was just as prevalent in the 50s and 60s as it was now, but in the 50s and 60s, there wasn't a psychologist on every corner. Right. And there is now. Yeah. And there wasn't subdoctoral licensing then. I mean, you... What does that mean? Well, back then, you had to have a PhD or an MD as a psychiatrist to see patients. Now they have marriage and family therapists, they have licensed social workers, they have different levels where you can do independent practice. So that's broadened the number of people that can provide services. And some people think that's a good thing, some people think it's not. I generally think it's a good thing because I think 58% of our rural markets today have no psychiatrist available, and something like 50 or roughly have no mental health professional available at all, none. So there's just nobody available to help people in the outlying areas. So I think the more people you can get into the profession, so long as there's a degree of competency, is better. But I think it's always been prevalent. I just think people didn't talk about it very much. It's just something they swallowed or they took to church or... Yeah. No.