Why Is Gen Z So Depressed? A Former FDA Psychiatrist Explains | The Brief

42% of Gen Z Americans have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. These numbers are batshit crazy. What in the hell is going on with Gen Z? We're in the midst of a medical and psychiatric crisis. Physically and mentally, they're doing very poorly. If we're spending billions of dollars more in mental health treatment, how can we have such bad outcomes? Our current system right now is really designed to just dish out pills. What are some of the harmful effects of these drugs? Along with blunting our hunger drive, it blunts our motivation. They're just a band-aid for a greater lifestyle problem. So this might sound a little strange, but should Gen Z men be drinking more alcohol? Dr. Whitdering, appreciate you making the time. Thanks, Shabba. It's great to be here. Doctor, I want to get straight to the incredibly concerning numbers from the Walton Family Foundation. It has found that 42% of Gen Z Americans have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. That is double the rate of older adults. 61% report feelings of or have been diagnosed with anxiety. 40% experience depression. 25% have been formally diagnosed with ADHD. These numbers are batshit crazy. What in the hell is going on with Gen Z? So I think this is real, what is happening right now. I think we're in the midst of a medical and psychiatric crisis going on right now. And I think most of it has to do with living out of alignment with with how we are designed and so um you know when we look at gen z i mean they are spending so much time on social media uh these days um um and i mean there's also like health problems going on there's you know 70% of our country is overweight or obese on average people are getting around 4,000 steps a day which is very low um younger generations tend to be more um on tech all the time and so you know they'll wake up they won't go outside they don't see the sun um they spend all their time inside and so that i think physically and mentally they're doing they're doing very poorly so i i think a lot of it comes down to to just completely living out of alignment with how we were designed. So to your point, Dr., suicide deaths have increased by 62% since the early 2000s. We also know that antidepressant use has surged by more than 500%. So what I'm trying to understand is we know psychiatric diagnoses continue to rise, particularly, again, amongst my generation. But then the obvious question is, if we're spending billions of dollars more in mental health treatment, how can we have such bad mental health outcomes? Well, we're spending money in bad ways. And, you know, the mental health industry, it's like, it's almost $400 billion a year. I mean, it's crazy. Like that's, you know, I think defense spending is around $900 billion. So spending like, you know, half as much on mental health that we spend on like our national defense. And so the question about like, what are we getting for that money is a really good one. Well, we're not getting a lot. our current system right now is really designed to just dish out pills in a major way. And people have seen this when they've gone to see their doctor. They'll see their doctor, they'll get diagnosed with depression or anxiety. Usually it's off a checklist. Oftentimes, and this is just baked into it, the doctors won't have time to really understand their lives. Most psychiatric meds are prescribed by family medicine doctors who spend on average around seven minutes of face time in the visit. This is just the reality of the commercial insurance model where the doctors, that's the time that they have to spend with them if they're going to make ends meet financially for the practice. And so when you have a practice like that, what often ends up happening is you understand nothing about your patients. You diagnose them with checklists and you treat them with algorithms. And the biggest algorithm that we have is, oh, you're depressed, let's get you on an antidepressant and so oftentimes people just end up on these medications they get limited attention to fix their the underlying causes you know many of which i mentioned a moment ago and so people fester in their medical and psychiatric problems kind of blunted with drugs and and they just never get any better and ultimately if you don't actually address why someone is feeling unwell or depressed, it leads towards suicide. So to me, RFK Jr., Health and Human Services, the Maha Make America Healthy Again movement in general, they kind of make the argument among many that America is being overprescribed. Would you say that's an accurate diagnosis of the problem? Are Americans being overprescribed? Is the solution to everything just throwing pills at the problem? I mean, absolutely. I mean, we are not doing fundamentally normal things that we know work on mental health. I mean, we have let our health care be taken over by moneyed interests. And who are the two biggest players? Well, it's the pharmaceutical industry. Clearly, they have a commercial incentive to make us think about our life problems in a medical lens because they have the drugs for it, whether it's the GLP-1s or the SSRIs. The other big group are the doctors. I mean, doctors are also heavily invested in essentially wanting patients to look at their problems with the medical lens so they come to the doctors but when it comes to mental health this has really led our country astray because it has created the impression that a lot of things that are actually better than the drugs and safer than the drugs you know whether it's dietary intervention movement getting enough sleep and having healthier relationships finding meaning and purpose people look at that as oh yeah that's like the mild stuff you know that's for the mild depression That's some alternative stuff. But for the like the serious genetic stuff, you know, crack out the drugs, you know, that's what we need. And that is completely false. You know, the the other stuff is is what actually gets people sustainably well in the long run. Doctor, there's a lot there to unpack, but just because you mentioned GLP-1, I want to focus on that very briefly. We have seen the explosion, not just in popularity, but the actual usage of GLP-1 drugs, chief among them, perhaps, Zepbound, Ozempic. But you make the argument, as do many doctors, that this could actually be linked to depression, anxiety, suicidality. Can you just walk me through that? What are some of the harmful scientific and medical effects of these drugs? Oh, sure. Yeah, we can talk about that, but I'm going to take a step back and talk about why there is a need for GLP-1s in the first place, because I think this is great for context, Shabbos, is we use food like drugs in this country. I want to be really clear about that. These foods are designed to essentially be calming agents. When you're going through your unhealthy life and you're feeling unwell and you're feeling irritable, you reach out for a bag of ultra-processed food or, you know, something that's salty, sweet, or has a lot of fat in it, and it calms you down. You know, that's the way that a lot of the food is designed. You know, 60% of the calories that kids are having these days are coming from ultra-processed foods because it's easy and it also pacifies them. And so now we have the emergence of a drug that is, you know, it's not addressing the reason why we're emotionally eating all the time, you know, which really has to do again with living out of alignment with with how we were designed to live it doesn't address that it blunts our ability it blunts off our hunger drive and and so that's that's what it's doing that's why people are losing weight and along with blunting our hunger drive it blunts our motivation as well um and that's where people start talking about this thing called Ozempic personality, where they just feel meh. They just feel unmotivated to do anything. And there are a lot of these mental health problems. So again, GLP-1s, they're just a band-aid for a greater lifestyle problem that's going on. So this might sound a little strange. I'm not necessarily advocating for this, but NYU marketing professor, I'm sure you saw this, Professor Scott Galloway, he essentially argues that Gen Z, particularly Gen Z men, should actually be drinking more alcohol in social settings. He says the point is not about getting drunk, but it's about encouraging physical togetherness, reducing social isolation, breaking through digital screens to build actual real-world human connections. In my view, the worst thing that's happened to young people is the anti-alcohol movement. I've had Huberman on, who I'm a big fan of, and Antje on, and my point is that the risks to your 25-year-old liver are dwarfed by the risk of social isolation. In sum, think of all the amazing relationships you've had in your life and be honest did alcohol play a role in some get out drink more and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off yeah i'm just curious should gen z men be drinking more alcohol yeah he's spot on there i mean kids are spending on average around five hours on social media a day and so when we think about like where does that where could that time go well previously that time was spent outside in the sun playing sports with your friends walking around going to shops socializing sitting in a bar drinking sleeping a lot of these things are way more natural than staring at an LED flickering screen uh where you're exposed to you know rage bait online and things you know and and all of that so he's absolutely right you know that that yes even if it comes with you know a beer in one hand it's actually way healthier than than, you know, being a golem inside that never sees the light and is just sitting behind a computer. So, relatedly, this might be a very weird question, so I apologize in advance, but there was a recent study, it was talked about in the New York Times, and it shows, I'm going to read this to make sure I get it right. One in four Gen Z adults say that they have never had sex, and the number of young people who haven't had sex in the past year has doubled from 2020 to 2024, from 12% to 24%. In your medical opinion, and this is going to sound strange. To combat the loneliness epidemic, to combat isolation, is it actually healthy for young people to be engaging in romantic relationships and having physical attractions to one another? Yes, Shabbos. I mean, it really is the most important thing that you can do. Anytime there's an epidemiological study, it shows that being in intimate relationships confers more happiness. Having children confers more meaning and purpose in your life. And if you now have replaced intimate relations with others with pornography or chatting with people online instead of the real deal, you've shut yourself off from one of the core components of human happiness, which are these intimate, loving relationships. And I mean, so it's just a huge disaster what's going on. Okay, so on another concerning note, according to the American Enterprise Institute, 30 years ago, the majority of men, this is close to 60%, they reported having at least six friends. Today, the number has been cut in half. Only 25% have close friends. 15% of adult men in America have no friends at all. That's a fivefold increase from 1990. Amongst my generation, Gen Z, 30%. 30% of Gen Z men have zero friends at all. What is happening? and i know we've alluded to the medical and scientific problems with suicidality with depression with anxiety but just from a friendship perspective this is this is insane i mean i can speak i'm a millennial and i can kind of speak speak to how this has impacted me i i feel like i've right now my whole life has been dominated by work i mean that is the cultural values going on and you know i often get up and leave and i leave my friends behind and then i often find myself socially isolated from others um i also think you know the there's a lot of political polarization going on right now there's a lot of canceling going on online and i also think it kind of scares people to open up and just be themselves and that can create barriers but i'm gonna push this back on you and you don't have to be an answer but i'm just i'm just so curious i was like what do you think is going on as you know someone down in the the gen z trenches what do you see happening? As the token Gen Z representative for this conversation, I would say it's social media. I mean, why do you need to have a physical relationship when you have pornography in your basement? I would say it's also a fear of cancel culture and a blowback to me too. I'm scared of asking that pretty girl out because I don't want to have any type of professional blowback or social isolation as a result. I do think to get a little political, men have been stigmatized and told that they are inherently due to their gender, due to their race, are bad or racist or misogynistic. And when you keep telling young people that thing, they're actually going to believe you. So I think the solution is not just medical or scientific. It's also cultural and political. I think, yeah, I mean, we're coming out of a period where for the last 10 years we've been told, you know, if you're if you're a man, especially if you're a white man, you're privileged and you're kind of racist. And you better watch out, buddy, because, you know, if you say something that could even be perceived in a negative way, you know, we're going to come after your job. So you made this point that psychiatric medication does have potential side effects. We know that this includes sexual dysfunction. We know this includes emotional blunting. We know that this includes dependence and other long term complications. But I sort of want you to preempt the nasty comments on YouTube who say, hang on a second, are you really telling me that someone who is depressed or someone who is anxious should not be on any medication at all? Like, how do you know to draw the line between when someone needs to just go on a walk, needs to solidify relationships versus, no, this person really has a chemical imbalance. We really do need to treat them with medication. Yeah, we need to move back to a common sense approach to using the drugs. No drugs are bad. I mean, they're essentially tools that you have in a toolkit to use. But if you OK, so if if you come to me and you are saying, hey, I'm depressed and I just put you on Prozac, did I did I really help you if I don't understand your life? Because let's say I dig a little deeper and I find out that you walk 4,000 steps a day, that you don't move your body, that you, you know, rarely get out of the house before 11 a.m. in the morning. You kind of wake up and you flip open your laptop and, you know, you go to work. You know, you also drink several cups of coffee a day. You're using nicotine products. You drink a couple drinks to go to bed at night. um and and and yes i could say well you know technically you meet criteria for major depressive disorder because you feel terrible and you're eating bad food and put you on the prozac is that really good medical care it's not that's crap i mean that's you you wouldn't want anyone to have that and that's pretty much what most people in our country are getting today they are getting care from uninvested doctors who do not understand their lives because all of that stuff getting that fixed, moving your body more, cleaning up your diet, exercising, getting out into nature early in the morning to set up your circadian rhythm properly, spending time outside. All of those things are the things that actually make people feel better. And when we just paper over them with drugs that don't address those problems, they just fester and people get worse. Now, if you come to me and you say, hey, Dr. Yosef, I've done all those things. I'm super invested in my healthcare. My relationships are good. I've got meaning and purpose in my life. and I'm healthy, I'm still feeling bad, I'll say, you know what? Let's use some Lexapro. Let's use some Prozac. You've done all the non-drug alternatives. You've really tried to get to the root cause. We can't find them. Now let's treat this more like a genetic depression and just, you know, we'll talk about the risks and benefits and we'll use it in that way. But that's like, that doesn't happen to anyone right now. Like most people, you know, they just, they come and say I'm depressed and they get a drug. And so that's, that's my problem with the current system. You know, Dr. Mitt, I shouldn't say this, but the real reason we booked you is I essentially wanted a free consultation because I'll just say that, you know, post-October 7th, I was diagnosed with anxiety. I was diagnosed with depression and I was given medication, a heavy dosage, I would say. And I gained a tremendous amount of weight. It didn't really make me feel better. And I would just add that anecdotally, what you're saying really resonates because what did in fact help was going on walks, was making friends, was solidifying, you know, previous relationships. It was things like that. So obviously every individual is different, but I very much relate to what you're saying. But I do have to ask, when you talk about these doctors who are over-prescribing or they're treating an algorithm rather than a patient, I mean, most individuals watching this would say, well, you know, I know my doctor. My doctor, for the most part, has my best interests at heart. So where is this coming from? Is this really because of the pharmaceutical companies? Is this because of bad policies or politics? Like, why are they doing this? These are not bad people. Yeah, Shabbos, it's two things. The first thing is the pharmaceutical industry. Now, when it comes to antidepressants i mean these these are some of the most successful drugs of all time i mean they made Eli Lilly a billion dollar company and they've done the same for many others when you essentially have like five or six different companies selling these drugs you have billions of marketing spend which are trying to control the narrative about these medications and the most effective thing that they ever did was convince the public that that depression is a genetic problem it's medical in origin and it needs to be treated by drugs That is not true at all. It is not backed up by the medical literature. And depression is much more broad and should be addressed in more holistic ways. So that's the first thing they did. They convinced the public and the doctors to look at depression in that way. The second major player is simply an economic one. Back in the 90s, health insurance companies conglomerated and they negotiated with doctors on how much they were going to get paid per visit. That number was so low that doctors now have to see people with seven minutes of face time to essentially make the medical practices economically viable and so you have these lovely people these are doctors in our families these are our friends these are our parents who essentially are trying to do a job with a hand tied behind their back now if you're seeing if you have to see like four or five people an hour you have a patient panel of 2,000 people how well can you understand their lives you can't It's effectively impossible. And so these good people, they do what they can in their limited time, which is essentially, oh, you filled out this questionnaire, you're depressed, and I know that there's an FDA-approved drug for this. Let me just prescribe that. And so that's essentially what's happening. These aren't bad people. They just don't have the time to do the job properly. Doctor, in the minute I have with you left, I want to talk about something that is somewhat tangential to this conversation, but actually incredibly important, especially with my generation. And that's talking about someone I wish we weren't clavicular. And just in general, the dangers of the looksmaxing movement, including obviously, the rising use of stimulant drugs, chief among them, Adderall. We also know that clavicular himself overdosed and had a seizure on livestream in front of 10s of millions of young Americans watching. Can you just bring attention to this issue? Why would you say that looks maxing from purely scientific and medical reasons is such a dangerous trend? I love this question, Chavis. No one has ever asked me this before, and I'm so ready for it. It's the greatest thing. You got to talk to more young people, doctor. Yeah, yeah. I have to. When I look at someone unlike Clavicula, I just think about him being just the product of social media and crap values. If you turn on social media, it's all about how good looking are you? How much money do you have? It's a real flex culture. And so you get these impressionable people who think, oh, this is just what I have to be. And I can't blame them for that. I mean, if that's what the algorithm is feeding you, and there's a lot of that stuff on the algorithm, it can throw you into these really dark holes now here's why it's a bad thing it's a bad thing because that doesn't lead to happiness over time you know how how good looking you are or how wealthy you are i mean it's it's a cliche money doesn't buy happiness and and all of that and so if you spend five hours a day listening to that stuff you're going to start developing body dysmorphia and getting looks maxing and getting all of these surgeries and things like that but there's so much more to life than what you look like you know for instance you know living a life in service of others you know charity relationships you know a lot of the great values that we used to get from church and our elders and a lot of that stuff is just now being washed away because people don't go to church anymore and it's being replaced by this garbage online and that's why you get people like Klavikula who are taking amphetamines to try and stay cut and psychiatric drugs. And he's going to have a mental health crisis. I mean, I don't want this for him, but I would not be surprised if we hear about a mental health crisis because he is living in an incredibly unhealthy way, physically and psychologically. It's almost like a train wreck that's about to happen. Unfortunately, we got to end it there, but this has been a really fascinating, albeit depressing, yet nevertheless important conversation. Dr. Joseph Witt, during former FDA medical officer, board-certified psychiatrist and, of course, CEO and medical director of Tabor Clinic. Doctor, very much appreciate you making this on. Chavez, so great to talk with you about Klavikula and all these things. Well, thank you so much for watching this week's episode of The Brief. Feel free to keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below. 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