The Mental Health Paradox: Awareness, Accountability, and the Search for Real Solutions

In this episode of The Unhinged Father, we tackle the evolving conversation around mental health awareness, personal accountability, and the challenges within the mental health industry. While acknowledging the importance of recognizing anxiety, depression, and other mental health struggles, I explore a growing concern: Has society swung too far in glorifying mental health labels rather than seeking real growth and solutions?

We also dive into the role of mental health professionals, the risks of misdiagnosis, and the potential influence of political bias in therapy. Are mental health providers helping individuals progress—or are some reinforcing victimhood? Plus, I share personal insights on how to find the right therapist and why validation without guidance can be more harmful than helpful.

This is an open conversation, not an attack—if you’re a mental health professional or someone with thoughts on this topic, I’d love to hear from you! Let’s break through the noise and discuss what really matters when it comes to mental well-being.

📢 Join the discussion: DM me on Instagram @the_unhinged_father or email unhinged.father@gmail.com if you’re interested in a future episode!

#MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression #Therapy #MentalHealthAwareness #PersonalGrowth #Accountability #TheUnhingedFather #SelfImprovement #ParentingPodcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Mental Health Awareness
• 10:05 Navigating Political Bias in Mental Health
• 14:04 Conclusion and Open Invitation for Discussion

Transcript

Robbie (00:00)
All right, everyone. Welcome to the show today. Hope you're all having a fantastic day, having a great week, having a great start to the year, all those things. Let's go ahead and jump in to this week's episode. And I wish I could say that I had a little bit more well planned out. Unfortunately, I've got a little bit of an idea on what I wanted to talk about. It's something that I've been talking about recently with my wife and a few other people. And I think that it is something that would be good to talk about here on the podcast. So let's go and dive into it. Now.

As I kind of talked about last week, I talked about how there's an increase in anxiety and depression and things like that within the younger generation. But I just wanted to talk about mental health on a broader scale now, not just talking about the youths or the youths, as some people might call it, but just really talking about everyone and talking about society. There has been a huge increase in acknowledgement and visibility into mental health and mental health awareness.

That's all really good. I don't think anyone wants to go back to the days where you just kind of pushed it all down and repressed everything and didn't acknowledge that you were depressed or anxious or you had these things going on in your head or that you had some sort of mental deficit or mental disability or mental disorder, whatever it is. I don't think anyone wants to go back to where you just completely repressed that and we don't acknowledge that and we don't try to help cure that and move forward with it.

I do see something that's almost as troubling now in society. And it's something that I've noticed in, well, on social media in particular, but also just out and about in society. it's like, I think that it's good that we acknowledge when we have some sort of mental issue going on and that we acknowledge our mental health and wanna like try to make that as best as we can. But.

I almost see people using mental health disabilities or disorders as almost like a badge of honor now. And it's almost like, I've got this deal with it. This is why I do this. This is why I do that. And it's almost become an excuse for certain people. It's like, well, I'm just socially anxious. So I'm not going to do this or I'm not going to do that. Things that are required of them or that they should be doing. And people will utilize it almost as a, I don't know if a crutch is the right word, but like a crutch and also that the badge of honor one is like a really weird one. It's like, yeah, I'm

uh, 17 different mental disabilities and proud of it. I'm not saying that someone should be shameful of having a mental disorder or a mental disability or, um, not necessarily mental disability. I'm conflating the two right now. I'm talking about anxiety, ADHD, uh, depression, things like that.

Anyways, it's not necessarily something that it's like, this is something I'm extremely proud of. It's something that I acknowledge and that I'm working through and trying to better myself because I don't think anyone really wants to be anxious. I don't think anyone really wants to be depressed. And those are the two that I'm gonna go to the most just because those are the most common. And I feel like those are the ones that have increased the most and are so well accepted. And those are the ones that I see people utilize as

excuses or badges badges of honor and things that they're super proud of

Another thing on top of this is that one thing that we don't talk about enough, and I feel like it's almost like if you have this conversation, you're seen as like a, I'm anti mental health awareness. I'm anti mental health support, all of that stuff. But just like everything else in this world, you need to have good mental health providers. You need to have people who are actually good at their job and doing a good job and

who are actually providing you a service that's trying to make you better. It's just like anything within medicine. Like if you have a bad doctor or if you have a bad pharmaceutical, even if overall medicine, doctors are a good thing, all that, if you go to a doctor and they prescribe you something for something that you don't have, they schedule a surgery for...

I don't know, an amputation because they think that you've got gangrene in your foot and you don't have gangrene in your foot and then you end up not having a foot right. Those are all, those are all bad things. That's not a good thing. That's bad care. And so I would personally rather not have any care than shitty care. It's almost like having no care at all was better than having this, this bad care or having this misdiagnosis. And I think the same could be said for mental health. think that the same could be said for when we go in to see

a therapist or a counselor or something like that. If these people who we're putting our trust in are not providing a good service to us, or if they're misdiagnosing, or if they're not directing you in a direction to actually get better or to deal with whatever issues you've got going on, it could be worse than just the repression aspect of it. Both are shitty, but I think that sometimes you could be led down a much

worst path if you're giving this trust to someone who is either incompetent or potentially has mal intent.

we can take something as common as, I don't know, Tylenol or Advil and look at them and be like, hey, yeah, if I've got a headache, taking a couple Tylenol is a good thing. But if I go in and take 200 Tylenol, that's a bad thing. Too much of something can be a bad thing. I know that there's a lot of different ways to go with this here. I'm not, again, throwing this out there.

I'm not against people going and seeking help for their mental health or going to see professionals for their mental health. I actually strongly encourage going and getting counseling and talking to people who are experts within this. But I also strongly encourage you to make sure that you're doing your due diligence and not just trusting any person off the street or any person. Right. You need to really dive down and make sure that what you're talking about with them is is productive and

that it's leading you down a good path. Like if you're going in some place and you're just getting worse and worse and more depressed and more anxious and all this stuff, maybe that's not the right person for you. And I would say that one issue, a big issue I have with people that I've had personal experience within mental health, and I'm not saying that this is every mental health professional, but I've seen that a lot of times what the industry has almost become is just like a

a validation clinic. It's like everything that the client brings in. It's like, I've got to validate them. I've got to validate their feelings, validate their emotions. I've got to validate everything. And if you validate everything, like not everything in this world is valid. I'm sorry, but there are just some things that are right, some things that are wrong. And it's hard for me because I'm very, I'm very black or white on a lot of things. Even though I live in the gray quite a bit, like I have a very strong sense of right, wrong.

things like that and I'm trying to work on being able to see things through a nuanced lens. And one of the things that I've discovered is that it's not, know, say I have a friend who's got an issue and they're feeling these big emotions. They're anxious about something because some of that happened and the event is neutral. It's not anything super crazy. They're not going to get in big trouble, but they're having these big fear, emotions, anxiety, whatever it is.

I've kind of learned to, when I'm talking to them and trying to help them to validate the fear, like, Hey, I understand why you could be feeling this fear. I understand why you could be feeling anxiety about these things. Like that's the part that I'll validate within them, but I make sure that I differentiate their emotions and what they're feeling about that from the actual event. Like I don't validate like, yeah, this is scary. You're like, yeah, this is a something to be anxious about.

I don't necessarily do that. It's more like I understand why you have the emotion and why this is triggering for you. But at the same time, this event, it's neutral. It's not anything to be crazy about. I'm not trying to shame you for feeling these things. I'm validating the fact that I understand why you could be feeling these things, but I'm also trying to calm you down from that event so you don't have those feelings. So you don't...

feel that anxiety because at end of the day, anxiety was here for a reason. We have anxiety and fears because it helped us survive as a species and it developed evolutionarily for our benefit. But that being said, now we live in a society that's relatively safe and we have a lot less danger and being constantly anxious and constantly fearful, it's not a fun way to live.

And anyone that tells you differently is like, no, it's fine. No. Stress kills. Stress kills. High anxiety. It's OK in certain moments. But if you're constantly on edge, you're constantly on fight or flight mode, it's not good for your health. It's not good for anyone. And it doesn't feel good. I know because I've been there.

Another thing that pops up for me within the mental health profession with counselors, with psychologists, with psychiatrists, with whoever it is, is that one thing that can't be separated from this, and I don't want to go too much into the political aspect, but I think it's worth touching on because as Michael Jordan once famously said, I think this was him at least, I might be butchering the quote, but Republicans buy sneakers too.

And both sides of the aisle, every person out there may need help with their mental health, may need to go and see someone and seek professional help, may need to go and see a counselor or a psychologist. And one thing that is very evident is that the mental health profession, industry, whatever, I don't know what it's called, that industry is skewed one way.

And it doesn't matter which way you look at it. It is skewed one way. It usually falls in one political sphere. I'm not even going to say what it is. You know. You know a political sphere that falls within. And I think that's something that's interesting to that is like, even if you are someone like me who falls into different areas within the political sphere, I like to kind of stick in the middle and pick and choose what I feel is appropriate, what I think is right, what I think is moral, and what I think is best for society. That's

That's how I roll politically. But what if you go in and you have these issues and then someone finds out that you disagree with them on one political issue or that you voted for the wrong candidate or that you disagree with them in some other aspect of society or culture? These are people that you are trusting your mental wellbeing to and you're giving this huge amount of trust. You're trusting them with like

the deepest, darkest secrets of your, your being things that you don't trust anyone with things that you've never touched, touched upon with anyone, things that you probably don't even fucking know are there because you've pushed them down so deep and you're trusting them to someone. And it's really difficult. No one could tell me different because I saw what was going back and forth with people that I knew people that I knew mental health professionals that I knew on social media, on online in person.

just the amount of vitriol and disgust that went back and forth in the last political cycle, the last election cycle. And you can't tell me that someone is able to completely differentiate themselves from those beliefs, from that hate, from that anger. And so if you've got a mental health professional who's seeing someone who believes something different and that comes out, that's a concern.

It's a conflict of interest in all reality. And I don't say this thinking that, you know, hey, you need to have like a Republican mental health professionals and a Democrat mental health professional. Like, no, that's fucking stupid.

What you really need to have happen is for this mental health profession to be filled with people that are diverse, diverse thinking, diverse all over the place, Diverse politically, diverse in their ideology, all of those things, right? You need a large group of people. And then also part of this is, and I'm sure that they say that they do, but really it needs to be driven down as like, there should be more regulation.

and I'm not one to go with government regulation, but there should be more insight into the type of help that people are actually getting. Because sometimes I think, you you think I'm going to a mental health professional, I'm getting all the help I need, and it could send you in the wrong direction. So I feel like I'm just, you know, just rambling on here about something that I see as potentially being an issue. But it's just, how is someone who thinks differently

say they see a post that their mental health professional posted and it's a different ideology. Like how are they supposed to trust that that person isn't gonna lead them in the wrong direction because they've got some sort of issue with either their political ideology or the person that they voted for. How are they supposed to have that trust between themselves and their mental health professional? And at the end of the day, that mental health professional is working for that person. That is their client.

they should have their best interest in mind, but as we saw, if you think differently in the way that the society is so galvanized right now and just there's so much hate and anger that's constantly being spewed from both sides is that I don't know if that is possible.

I don't know if it's possible for people to remain neutral. And that's just my thoughts on that.

So yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to talk about today. I think I rambled a little bit more than I normally do on this one. I think this would be a great one to have a conversation with someone who is a mental health professional, who's interested in having an open conversation about this. Not necessarily me attacking people who are mental health professionals. I think that a lot of them do a great job. just like police officers, just like politicians, just like doctors, there's good ones, there's bad ones.

And I think that it's fair to try to narrow down like who are the good ones, who are the bad ones, what's the good stuff that's happening, what's the bad stuff that's happening.

And that doesn't mean that I'm attacking like mental health profession in.

in its entirety. think that it's actually a really good thing. Like I already said, I don't want us to go back to the 1980s or the 1970s when we just pushed everything down. I think that was a bad way to live and that we should be having these conversations. We should be talking about it. But we also need to make sure that we're not going too far to the other side. Not going so far to where we validate every little thing, where the people aren't actually providing any of the steps needed to progress to get better. And yeah.

Also, it sounds like it's just hailing outside right now. You've got some thunder coming in. The storm just rolled in. And so if you hear background noise, that is hail hitting my house right now. So that being said, these are some of my thoughts. If there's any mental health professionals that listen to this and you either disagree with me or you'd like to have a conversation on this, not necessarily in a combative environment, but also not like every other podcast. It's just like, I've got a guest on, let me kiss their ass and agree with everything that they say. That's not going to happen here.

I

have questions and I like to question a lot of different things and I'm always happy to hear other people's opinions of it and have like a real conversation about it. Because I think also one thing is that we've put so much trust in quote unquote the experts that we...

ignore our own intuition sometimes that we ignore our own thoughts our own opinions and There are a lot of smart people out there a lot of people who know about shit like this who didn't necessarily just go to school for it and I think that it's valid to have conversations between the professionals and the average Joe's like me they might be right, maybe they are right Maybe they've got more theory behind it But I feel like you need to have that working knowledge of all of this stuff as well thrown in there and not just the theoretical so open invitation anyone who is

a mental health professional and would like to have this conversation, let me know. I'd be happy to have you on the podcast. So anyways, that's gonna do it for today's episode. A little bit shorter, a little scattered today, lot going on in life, but I hope everyone has a fantastic rest of the day. Have a great week and I will see y'all next week.