VSRF LIVE TONIGHT: Episode 206: A Special Mental Health Edition with David Wayne, BSN-RN and Kim Witczak.
Thursday, December 4: 7pm Eastern | 4pm Pacific
Tonight on VSRF Live, please join us for a heartfelt and much-needed conversation about mental health, antidepressants, and the growing concern that too many young people are being labeled and medicated without ever getting the full story.
Livio and I sat down with our guests earlier this week to prerecord this important conversation, and it airs tonight. It was our honor to be joined by:
David Wayne, BSN-RN, a psychiatric nurse who has spent years caring for patients in crisis and now focuses on integrative, whole-person approaches to emotional well-being.
Kim Witczak, a nationally recognized drug-safety advocate whose personal tragedy led her to fight for clearer warnings, stronger protections, and true informed consent for every family navigating the mental-health system.
SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are among the most widely prescribed drugs in America. While they help some people, many patients, especially kids, are never fully informed about side effects, withdrawal challenges, or non-pharmaceutical options that might support their well-being just as effectively.
We also explored a bigger question: Are we medicalizing normal human experience? Sadness, shyness, restlessness, boredom, and natural responses to stress are increasingly treated as disorders requiring a prescription.
This is a conversation about what SSRIs actually do, what the evidence shows, the side effects people often wish they knew earlier, how to discuss options with clinicians, and whole-person strategies that support emotional resilience.
This isn’t about blame. It is about giving families the information they need to make informed decisions.
Please tune in tonight for this powerful and timely discussion.
Steve
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If the study of nutrition had been required in Med School... perhaps doctors would have learned about the nutrients that the human mind and body needs...and they would never have prescribed drugs. Nutrients coming from food are what the body was designed to handle. Drugs of any kind would destroy the inner organs, glands and cells of the body. Nutrients nourish the body and the brain. Drugs destroy the glands in the brain which contribute to the ability to think, analyze, remember, emotional development, and consciousness relating to intuition, perception; knowingness of right or wrong.
In 1999, when the Columbine shooting happened, I was on an advisory committee for a public-school superintendent named Thomas Vanderark. Beginning with the Columbine shooting, I became obsessed with researching all school shootings. The common denominator of the shooters was that they were prescribed antidepressants. Tom went on to be the first director of the Gates Foundation. The Columbine shooting upset school districts across the country.
The FDA began requiring black box warnings on antidepressants for children and adolescents in October 2004. This warning was later expanded to include young adults in May 2006.