Doctor Mike

Is she making this whole story up?

Is this fictional?

Is she sharing her real life?

And no one really knows.

And because of all this curiosity, it's garnered a lot of attention.

So in the past history of examples of therapy, of seeking psychiatric help, there's some movies that come to mind, The Beautiful Mind, a lot of very powerful Academy Award winning movies.

Do you think that they've given people an accurate representation of certain conditions?

Or do you feel like because they're trying to

suspend reality and allow everyone to understand and have buy in that they've lowered the accuracy level to a degree where perhaps becomes a bit harmful.

what about individuals self-diagnosing or perhaps discussing their medications, their therapy styles on social media?

Because I think about one of the problems we discuss in the medical side of things is direct-to-consumer advertising with pharma.

And these days I'm like, yeah, that's a problem.

But I feel like it's less of a problem now because the things that go viral are not direct to consumer ads.

It's the things that give social proof.

So someone making a very passionate plea of everyone should be on this medication.

It saved my life and really going to bat for it perhaps can be a disservice way more effective than any direct to consumer advertisement from pharma.

So what's your stance on individuals making videos like that?

Do you generally discourage it in your patients or is that not something you cover?

Yeah, because I think about how difficult it is to access mental health support, seeing a doctor, let alone in any specialty.

But then they see some of their friends that are perhaps sharing their mental health journey, getting a lot of support.