The term “mental health crisis” is everywhere, but what does it really mean? Hosts Eddie Reece and Bill Courtright dive deep into this pressing topic, examining how societal awareness, stigma reduction, and the challenges of modern life contribute to the ongoing struggle with mental health. From the impact of social media to the pressures of conformity, they unpack the hidden dynamics behind what many call a crisis. This conversation isn’t just about problems—it’s about fostering understanding, empathy, and actionable ways to navigate everyday life. Join them as they shed light on how therapy and connection can make a lasting difference.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Do We Have A Mental Health Crisis?
In this episode, we’ll wax poetic on all the issues of the day as it relates to therapy, mental health, and all the things that therapy can help and support, and the reasons why someone might seek out a psychotherapist or get on YouTube and search for some things. If that’s how you found us, we appreciate it. Make sure you like and subscribe. Eddie and I love to talk about this stuff. We do so once a week, whether we like it or not, and we do it. That’s a beautiful thing.
We were talking off-air about what we wanted to talk about and what kind of conversation would resonate with our audience. Eddie made a comment and it hit me like a brick to the head. It was essentially that we as a society are hearing over and over again three words that in and of themselves are probably carrying with them a little bit of anxiety hearing the words themselves. Put together, I don’t know how it happened and if it’s an accurate representation of where we are as a people.
Those three words are crisis and mental health. The reality is we’ve all heard on a news program or read in an article or conversation with friends or family about the 2024 mental health crisis, whether it’s a reaction to an active shooter, mass event, violent act, political discord, or social media activity, whatever it is. It seems like, “There’s a mental health crisis in this country.” With that as the issue raising questions in the event we are truly in crisis with our nation’s mental health, how did we get here?
Society’s Misuse Of The Term “Mental Health”
If I were in a discussion with, say, a reporter doing a story on the mental health crisis, point to me probably the history of humankind when there wasn’t a mental health crisis. There are so many different things that folks need to know about this. First of all, mental health, being used as the description, means the health probably of your brain. It’s mental, emotional, and physical. It’s all tied in together. Your gut health has as much to do with your mood and things like depression and anxiety.
I wish people would stop saying mental health. At least go mental and emotional health. I’ll get that out of the way. The crisis is there because people are beginning to reduce its stigma lightly. In the Southeast, the stigma is quite high. If you reduce the stigma a little bit, people begin to notice it. There are people who are well known for speaking out about their struggles, going to therapy, and things like that. That helps.
You have the focus on kids for so long. I don’t know when this started but it’s all about taking care of the kids. “What about me? I’m old. Take care of me, too, if you don’t mind.” This is all about the kids. The kids are in crisis and so are the adults, adolescents, and everybody. It’s always been here. You don’t think there were mental and emotional issues involved when this country was primarily rural.
People lived on farms with 6, 8, 10, to 12 kids, a mom and a dad. You have more work to do than you’re ever going to get done. The folks are not both smart and educated. You don’t think there were mental health crises when women and children were chattel and the men used to publicly beat the women and children and were applauded for it. You don’t think there was trauma and mental health. It’s always been here.
In a way, when I turn into the older generation that I grew up with and notice, maybe it’s age, how things are so much worse now. In so many areas, things are the best they have ever been. A hundred years ago, there were a whole lot of people starving to death more than now, if you look at the population and get the percentage of it. There were a lot more wars going on. You go back 1,000 years, everybody’s beating up on everybody with wars, fights, and cowboys shooting each other. The mental health crisis has bugged me.
It sounds to me like there’s an awareness, which perhaps is newfound. I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to learn. I haven’t been around for a long time but across a couple of generations, I certainly have seen the advent of technology, social media, connectivity, and the social, competitive nature of stuff and experiences being broadcast to the world as a way to measure our life’s worth. I say that with some tongue in cheek.
I hope you understand that I don’t subscribe to that as a statement of value, but I see it as a marketer everywhere. I also believe that awareness precedes progress. As the stigma subsides, whether it began with Tony Soprano or the first HBO program about a mob boss getting therapy, it wasn’t that long ago. Even that moment was a shocking revelation that this organized crime figure would have an anxiety-induced event and a doctor would recommend it.
How do you be in the mob and not have anxiety? How do you not have a paranoid complex? Everybody is out to get you.
This is all to your point. This is not new. What I’m saying is it’s not a crisis of volume of incidents. It is perhaps a crisis of awareness.
That’s an excellent way to put it, Billy. The crisis is in the fact that people are shocked that people have mental health issues. Look in the mirror. This sounds so blown out of proportion but I honestly believe that there’s not a person on this planet that couldn’t be helped by a good therapist whose life would not get better if they spent some time with a good therapist. It’s a shock of recognition. “Look, people have a problem.”
It’s a black light in a hotel room. It’s jarring.
Mental Health Crisis In Today’s Society
I saw that one time. I don’t know what it is. “Look how dirty the room is.” It is shocking. As we’re talking about this, my wish is that instead of reporting about the mental health crisis, report about people who do have mental health issues. Everybody has always had issues.
Ignoring those issues won’t make it better.
They’ve been passed down since the first violence happened and the first child died because nobody knew what to do with it or couldn’t feed it. That’s all trauma, which is another word that makes me cringe. There is a mental health crisis. Everybody’s a mess and there’s such denial. If you want to name the crisis, it is a crisis of denial. The denial remains and is enforced by our culture. There’s so much pressure on everybody to be normal.
We’re all a mess. And there’s so much denial. The crisis is a crisis of denial.
I may have said this before in another podcast but clients will very often make comments like, “I want to be normal.” I go, “You are. That’s why you’re on my account.” Normal in a messed up culture is messed up. I want to help you be abnormal and rise above the normal so that you don’t struggle and suffer the way a normal person does.
You’re touching on something there that I want to shine a light on. You mentioned in the first few minutes how things were back when maybe we were a more rural society, on farms, and small communities supporting one another. There certainly wasn’t any social media. Although there was likely some gossip at the tavern, around the fire pit, on a hunt. The level of judgment that a person would encounter during their life was most likely confined to their family in a tight circle.
There weren’t that many people that you came across.
Over the course of 100 years, we’ve developed this technology, connectedness, association, and Tribalism. We could go hours and hours in a million different directions but I want to make this point. One thing that could be contributing to the relative crisis that some folks are calling it is the degree to which a human being is feeling judged has exponentially increased and is consistently placed upon them through their phone, computer, or workplace. I don’t know if that’s true. This is what I see as a behavioral scientist, marketer, and communicator.
There is so much desire for your point to be normal, good enough, and smart enough. I wonder if the byproduct or consequence of all that strain, awareness, and striving for what have you and then the lack of validation or recognition through how many likes I got, how many comments I received, or what someone said about my son, daughter, car, house, job, paycheck, waistline, spouse, or partner, it goes on and on. Could it be that we’re so concerned with what other people think and it’s causing some damage?
I don’t think anyone’s experience is any different than anyone’s experience of that in the past. If you only come across 40 different people in your life and everybody is at least teasing you, poking at you, or your parents or school teacher beating the crap out of you, you’re going to have all of those issues. It doesn’t matter how many people. If your world is this small and a good portion of those people, especially the people closest to you, are giving you all this grief, multiply that by 100,000. This can’t get bigger.
When we’ve talked about shame, it is like, “I am completely worthless.” Shame is not, “I’m not such a great person.” You explore that. It goes to, “Nobody’s going to want anything to do with me. I’m going to die under a bridge alone. The vultures won’t even eat me. That’s how worthless I am.” That happens. It doesn’t matter how many people pile on. You can’t get worse than that.
The news story is generally children or young people are having a big mental health crisis and that’s all about social media. I don’t care if you get beat up by social media or a baseball bat. The damage is the same. You’re not going to blame the baseball bat, social media, or anything but the water that we swim in. That’s where it comes from. Go pick out any boogeyman you want to pick out. It doesn’t matter.
This is what I wish the press talked about and what I wish was put out there. Sure, there’s a crisis and there always has been. If you want to reduce that crisis, go to therapy. Read self-help books that are worthwhile. There are not a lot of them that are worthwhile but read some good books. Get more involved in your community. Make connections with people who aren’t going to beat you up in any way. Stop the relationships you have with the people who do.
That’s what I wish people would cover instead of the mental health crisis this year. “Here’s another segment about how we’re all screwed up and what to do about it.” These are your problems, too. These are not the problems of those people over there. You and your loved ones don’t argue. You and your loved ones aren’t estranged. You and your loved ones aren’t so enmeshed in each other. You wish you could strangle the other. You’re not yelling and screaming at your television or phone. You’re not depressed and completely hopeless about your life and the world. Go down the line.
I know people who are incredibly emotionally healthy. We all have problems. How in the world is somebody who is ashamed bound, who has been so beaten up in their lives and has a part of them that says, “I’m so worthless,” never once improved that one iota? It’s why I do this. I don’t want that person to exist or be the case for anybody. At some point, this guy that’s sitting on the corner of Kroger’s has been there for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I almost did it. I’m like, “Eddie, you don’t have time. You’d be late for an appointment.” I’m going to go over and sit down next to my daughter. Do you mind telling me how you got here and how you could be held to get something you want? I hate to see it.
Seeing it more and more.
For the folks who don’t know, I live in an affluent part of suburb Atlanta, Georgia. I got here when things were cheap.
Me too.
I bought in when the economy was down. I’m looking around and going, “What am I doing in a house where there’s something wrong? I don’t have that kind of car. I don’t belong to a country like that.” When it’s happening here, it breaks my heart. Everybody’s got problems. It’s one of the things that you came up with for the show. This is about everyday life.
Plenty of people talk about the biggies and specialize in schizophrenia, bipolar, and these sorts of things but I want to help the average person who struggles from time to time during the day. If they stop and look at it, they would go, “This is all the time for me. The circumstances I’m upset about, feel bad about, or get to me change every day but.” There’s not much awareness. It’s about what’s in here.
We’re all wounded birds.
How can you not be? I say this quite often. If you were raised perfectly, emotionally, physically, mentally, and healthy human beings, as soon as you walk outside, you’re going to get slammed by advertising, looking at your friends, talking to your friends, and getting involved with other human beings. You’re going to get hurt. You’re going to be a whole lot better and be able to deal with it than the normal person because you’ve got so much inside you that you learned from your amazing parents.
I don’t believe those parents see this. We get closer and closer to them. That’s why I say things are better off than they’ve ever been. This was years ago. I’m in this tiny town in Tennessee or something. I’m in a local pizza place. It’s not even a chain or anything. It’s some guy that lives there. I see a father and a small child. He’s probably five, maybe. They’re eating pizza. They got a soda there.
The kid is not being mean, bad, or anything but he knocked over a new full soda. After twenty minutes, his dad had to do all kinds of things and the kid was dropping stuff on the floor. He’s learning how to eat. This father, in this rural, never ever even hinted at being the least bit upset with his child. When he knocked that soda over, he’s like, “You knocked it over. Let’s get this cleaned up.”
I couldn’t sit in my chair. I had to go over and go, “Excuse me, my name’s Eddie. I’m a psychotherapist. I want to tell you that so many people I know, including myself, wish they had a father like you, the way you’re behaving with your son. I can’t tell you how much money you’re saving with therapy for your child. You’re doing a great job.” How many of us get that?
The Damage Of Shame And Conformity
I’m sure if I sit and watch this father and son over a few days, it might not be that way. We all have it. We’re all struggling and having a hard time with something. Maybe one day in my lifetime. People can tell their friends or maybe family all of those things. Nobody will try to turn it into something else. That’s the real damage that gets done. You feel forced to conform.
E. E. Cummings wrote a poem. Probably I won’t quote it exactly but it’s like, “To be yourself in a world that works night and day to turn you into somebody else is the hardest fight you will ever fight and keep fighting.” That’s where the real damage comes from. People can’t be who they really are. I have to qualify for that because you have a lot of self-help.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the hardest fight you’ll ever fight. Keep fighting.
Be yourself. If you’re a serial killer, please don’t be yourself. Be able to tell somebody who you are. “I got this urge. I want to kill people.” It never stops. Germany does an amazing job with people who get attracted to children as their sexual preference. There are billboards everywhere. There are commercials on TV and radio. “If you have any sexual attraction to children, please call this number.” They don’t get in trouble at all for calling that number. They get help. If the whole world did that, we would pretty much get rid of any child sexual abuse. It would be gone. I’m sure somebody would still appear in there but it’d be so dang rare. Do that every time.
I’m sure for some people, that’s going to be tough. I’m not saying it’s the wrong approach. You know what you’re talking about. I respect the heck out of you. Hearing that as a father of two, it is so difficult and visceral for me. That is a fear we have.
Here’s the problem, Billy. The reason why you have that fear is because you have been brainwashed by so much media that want to sell you something. The children who are sexually abused, the extreme vast majority of them are sexually abused by family members and people who are involved with the family, maybe neighbors that the family is close to. It’s not some guy in a van.
When I moved into the neighborhood I’m in, I’m in the suburbs. It freaked me out when I finally realized it one day. This is a dead-end neighborhood, so there’s one way in and one way out. When we first moved here, the school bus would stop on the highway that we’re connected to. I’m noticing one day all these cars parked. I’m on the road right here. The entrance is right there. I can’t even get into the neighborhood real well. Cars are having to move to let me in. I’m like, “Why is everybody parked there?” A school bus pulls up and young teenagers are getting off of it, not four-year-olds.
It’s a beautiful day. You can’t let your kid walk back through a dead-end neighborhood to their house because you’re afraid someone’s going to abduct them. I wanted to be like a homeless person and start preaching. That’s why you have that visceral response: because that says fear is great and there’s no reason for it to be. When I was growing up, somebody walked in and asked my mom where the boys were. There were three of us. “They’re outside.” Nobody showed up that we didn’t know, took any of the kids that we knew away, or did anything with us.
Where is that coming from?
Media is there not to inform you, entertain you, or do anything other than sell you something, be it a platform for a commercial. That’s it. I worked in the media and that’s all there is to it. You had people like me early on. I wanted to play this music and other people to hear it. I was fortunate enough to work at a non-commercial radio. Once you’re in a commercial media situation, it’s about how many eyeballs in May commercials are. What news source other than maybe NPR or something like that is going to run a story about there’s not a mental health crisis that has popped up out of nowhere?
Think about it. We were all mentally and emotionally so sound before. Now, we’re not. No. Who’s going to run a story about the way it’s always been? You have problems. I have. He has. She has. There’s no crisis that didn’t exist before. Who’s going to run that story? Are people going to be disclued that their TV, radio, and internet click in on them?
We agree on that. That’s for sure.
Who’s going to run the story about the hundreds of thousands of airplanes that landed safely, the millions of homes that didn’t burn, and the billions of people who didn’t harm another human? Who’s going to run the stories? Nobody. We are at our core. We’re electrical appliances. We’re neurology. We have a huge chunk of our neurology that’s all about not dying. That part of us is scanning 24 hours a day. It’s scanning and it turns the TV on. It’s like, “Mental health crisis, boom!”
What I’m hearing you say is in the same way that pedophiles aren’t taking over the world, your child is not in danger from the corner to your doorstep, and the majority of individuals are decent. I believe all three of those things are 100% true. The fact that I would have a weird reaction. I don’t know how else to put it. I’m hearing that a developed modern country like Germany has recognized that a better path forward for dealing proactively with the prevention of child sex abuse might not sound appealing.
It flies in the face of the fact that if it prevents more occurrences, who cares? Why does my opinion or reaction to hearing that there’s a billboard in Germany saying, “In the event you’re attracted to a child, please call this number?” That’s frightening to see but it shouldn’t be. The fact that I’ve reasoned with my mind and as someone who self-purports to be the voice of every person, what I realize is if it’s a successful preventative measure, then first of all, my judgment is unimportant and misplaced. It’s more a part of the problem than any piece of any solution that I could think of. I’m willing to admit that.
The Power Of Education And Open Communication
You could apply that to any big news issue like abortion rights. Do you want to cut down on abortions? Put sex education everywhere. For God’s sake, don’t leave it up to just the parents. First of all, I’m a teenager. Do you think I want to hear anything from my parents about it? I remember a comedian saying, “A lot of kids get to that age and get to talk about it. My wife and I had to talk with them. We sat down and said, ‘Your mom and I go at it crap. We are so excited that you’re getting to be about that age. We can’t wait for you to have those experiences that we have every night and in the afternoon. Before you get home from school, we are all over this.’” They’ll never have sex.
There are other ways to go about it. Teach people. Educate them. Get them to understand not only basic sex education. This is what happens. Sex education should also be relationship education, which needs to start from day one. “This is how you get along with your friends at school. These are the things you say and don’t say. Here’s how you play when there’s a conflict.” Let kids figure it out on their own. A lot of times, they will. Don’t make every moment a teaching moment.
These poor kids, every moment’s a dang teaching moment. Let me figure something out on my own. There are ways to avert this mental health crisis through education, psychotherapy, and calming your selves down. Stop watching so much media. Get off your phone. Turn to another human being and say, “How can I be of service? What can I do?”
I love the image of the Amish going, “Joe needs a barn. Let’s go build him a barn.” If we all built everybody a barn, whatever that looked like, it would be okay. You go to your neighbor and go, “I’m having some problems here. Would you mind?” If you do that, they’re going to go, “Yeah.” Most of my neighbors are like, “Let me know what I can do for you.”
Do that and let anybody know if there’s anything wrong. Get it all together. Someone to be admired, look at me. I don’t have any shame. Can you imagine having a conversation with somebody going, “Mom, I found this person and we’re having sex? Here’s what’s going on with us?” How have you handled that with your friends? Your friend goes, “I haven’t come across that but something like that. Here’s how we got some help with that.” “I was talking to a buddy of mine and he had that. This is what he was doing. Maybe you could try that and see.”
Can you imagine conversations like, “Hi, Billy. My name’s Eddie. It’s nice to meet you?” A few minutes into the conversation, it’s like, “Listen, I made a big chunk of money. It’s caused me a lot of anxiety. I don’t know what to do with it. We have to run up a bunch of credit card debt. We’re about $83,000 or $84,000. Have you ever faced anything like that? I’d love to get this taken care of. How much money did you make gross last year? That’s awesome. What’d you do with it in terms of investing and things like that? How much is your credit card debt? We could all help each other out. Do this and that.”
No. It’s a secret. I’m going to do a workshop in August 2025 for therapists about money. I truly believe that this culture is the biggest taboo right there with debt. Debt is their neck. Sex, no. People don’t talk about sex. “How much money did you make?” “Nah, we’re all going to die soon. That’s a big fear? How are you handling that?” That’s how you take care of the mental health crisis that has always been here. It won’t go away until we stop setting our hair on fire because of the mental health crisis. It takes a lot more thought than that and knowledge. It’s not a mental health crisis. That wasn’t there before. Here’s what you do about that. What else do you have?
I’m thoroughly enlightened. Well said. I am grateful that this information is getting out there. I don’t set a lot of metrics or goals about what we’re trying to accomplish but it’s always been inferred that Eddie and I would very much appreciate it if one version stumbled upon one of these episodes and looked at a way forward in a slightly different way. Reach out to a therapist.
At this point, we haven’t launched yet. We don’t know if we have anybody paying attention to us or not but I’m looking forward to that first episode where we can go, “Let’s go look at the mailbag. What do we get in here?” Joe from Arkansas asked this incredible question. We can riff on that for a while.
As your lips to God’s ears, Eddie, because it’s about to happen. Interestingly enough, it’s like we’re speaking into our future selves as someone stumbles upon this episode or tunes in. As we record this conversation, we’re preparing for the launch of a podcast that we’ve been recording for a year. It’s exciting. Our values were always to inform and perhaps inspire or, at the very least, educate and remove the stigma around therapy, psychotherapy, and mental health and all of the symptoms, components, and reasons that go behind it.
I, for one, feel fantastic. I feel so much more informed, better, more aware, and more accepting of the whole being of me. Eddie, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this but I don’t even know if what I’m receiving is therapy. What we’re talking about and what I’m learning about feels empowering. Where it shows up in my life is the level of empathy that I have for others.
You have a way of contextualizing. Every one of us is dealing with something around this enough-ism. “Am I enough? Am I good enough, smart enough, strong enough, wealthy enough,” whatever it is? The way you explain it and the way I hear it and learn from it, I have no doubt that it makes me a better husband, father, son, friend, business person, and human.
Outside of the cold I’m dealing with, I feel wonderful having had the opportunity to share this journey with you. In front of the world, I want to express sincere gratitude to you for including me in this project because it’s been enlightening. I know my wife and sons appreciate it. I hope my team appreciates it. The world will appreciate it one day here real soon. On behalf of everybody, thank you.
The Importance Of Empathy And Understanding
You’re welcome, Billy. That means a lot. In this last stage of my life, this is what I wanted to accomplish. If we can get you to where you don’t have a visceral reaction to pedophiles, then we’re there. Imagine a world where if you hear about someone having sex with a child or somebody beating somebody, your heart goes out to both people. Imagine a world like that.
Imagine a world where you hear about someone hurting someone else, and your heart goes out to BOTH people.
I guarantee you, both people have got some problems and both people can get a lot of help. It’s not a world of perpetrators and victims. It’s a world of people trying to figure their lives out as best they can. Let’s help everybody help them. There are people who need to be locked away for everybody’s safety and to protect them. If you’re going to do that, then get in there and help that person. Don’t just punish them because it’s not a punishment.
That’s what I’m shooting for. Let’s be kind and kinder. Don’t do what I wanted to do way too often of hearing something about money. I do work to change that. I’m a lot better about that but there are people who say and do certain things. I hope that’s where it gets out. I’m so stoked about the launch and all the other things we’ll be doing on this platform, spreading it out, and having people be a part of it.
The Value Of The Couch Trip Podcast
Ladies and gentlemen, if this episode or any of our episodes have created interest or intrigue or if you’ve got a question, please reach out to us privately, directly, or in the comments. We’ll be more than happy to address your concerns directly or on a future episode. It will be from you that we derive our topics and what’s important. At the end of the day, we’re here to serve you, our audience, and deliver for you the information that’s most beneficial.
We have a position, an opinion, and some awareness around some things that you may or may not. Hopefully, the enlightening conversation that we have here on YouTube and wherever you consume podcasts gives you some perspective and, hopefully, a way forward so that you can live a life, as Eddie describes, encompassing the entire human experience. That is the goal. With that, this has been another episode. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Important Links
Leave a Comment