Dr. Peter Michalos: Lindsay Clancy, Postpartum Depression & The Issues In American Healthcare

0:00For moments when the headlines, the politics, and all of the noise surrounding Washington become secondary to something much bigger. I'm talking about the health and the well-being of the American people. And today, I want to have a conversation that goes, well, let's just say well beyond the political talking points. Because joining me is Dr. Peter Michalos, a physician and a long-time medical professional who has spent decades examining some of the most important issues facing medicine, public health and our society. Dr., thanks for joining. Good morning. It's great to be with you. And yes, it turns out that health is really the most important thing that we have. The rest we can figure out. Everyone gets caught up in politics and all these different things. But in the end, the only thing that really matters is our mental and physical health. So I want to, Dr. if I can, because I want to jump in to a whole bunch of trials that are right now fascinating the American people.

1:02As jury deliberations are dragging on now, for example, in the Lindsey Clancy trial, what makes it so brutally difficult to get 12 people to agree on post-partum psychosis versus criminal intent? I mean, when extreme psychiatric defense meets reasonable doubt, why do you think that consensus becomes almost impossible? Well, I think that because post-partum depression is a very, very complicated issue and it turns out to be something that's very real that after some women deliver, there are wild hormonal shifts that occur when a baby is delivered. And in some people, the brain, which is basically a whole series of collection of chemicals, and that chemical imbalance occurs, some women can dive into a deep depression. And one of the big problems is getting access to care because unlike other diseases, the

2:06codes that give you a payable insurance code to get access to the help you need are not readily available. And many insurance companies don't recognize this as an entity. And if you're a new mother and you don't have the infrastructure around you, your mother and law, your whole family around like in the old days when I was a kid in Barrow Park, Brooklyn, grandma was on the second floor, it was on the first floor, you don't have all the infrastructure and help. So these women, even if you made a psychiatric appointment, they can't grab a newborn baby or maybe another kid and go get help they need. And then when they don't get that help and they go into that deep dark place and you have a screaming baby that has all kinds of demands and bread feeding and then things can get a little bit crazy. And the other problem is there are new medications, there's actually an FDA approved pill, you take one a day for 14 days, but a lot of insurance companies won't pay for it and getting to

3:11a doctor and getting an appointment in the new healthcare system makes it very challenging. So that's why it's difficult because people have compassion because I used to work in Rikers Island, I did five years of urgent care medicine and when I dealt with the inmates and I would say how can these people do that? And then one inmate one day told me that if there was a room with a fire and a burning baby and cracking the other room, I would let the baby burn in the other room and go get the crack, that's how powerful that urge is. And the same thing with these women with both part of depression, they go into such a deep dark place of wanting to hurt themselves and end it all, then they do these crazy things. And there's even an institute in New York, all the Selenians, the dude that is just dedicated to the psychological help of helping women with postpartum depression. So it's a very, very serious disease. And when you think back to legal history, the first time that not guilty by reason of insanity

4:16was used was by Henry Thor, the guy who shot the famous Thor remember who built the public library, Grand Central Station. And that famous architect was killed by Henry Thor and that was the first time that the fence was used. And that's why it's still something that is real. And I never really understood it. And that's when it clicked for me that some people are just, their chemistry is totally out of whack. And it's not really that person that you're actually dealing with at that moment. So I think that's what Dr. I got to tell you, I was on John's roundtable discussion and a lot of people were very angry at me for saying it, but I understand simply because I experienced a friend's wife who had postpartum psychosis. I'll never forget she had the baby four or five days later. We called just to check in to see how she's doing. I mean, her husband was my best friend. She was best friends with my wife. She was not the person that we know.

5:17And so we were so nervous. We went over there. My wife ended up staying with her for two days. The husband unfortunately had to travel for business. I took the child home. God knows what would have happened. But you know, I want to talk about something where you just brought it up about the assassination on the architect. We have watched people, for example, romanticize Luigi Mangione after the execution of that healthcare CEO literally in broad daylight. I mean, what underlying rot in our country in our culture is causing society to cross the line from frustration with a broken system and we will all acknowledge our healthcare system is broken to literally hero worshipping a vigilante murderer. Well, I think part of it is that I think first of all, it's horrible. No human being ever deserves to be killed or hurt. But what happens is in this culture right now that we have with these, basically, people

6:21have cards without care. And you can call right here in New York, for example, and you have one of these cards that are affordable, so-called affordable cards. And then you find out that you have a $5,000 deductible or an $8,000 family deductible and suddenly you're in collections and you don't have the money to pay for it. And then when you call to see a cardiologist, they tell you February 20, 20, 27 and this anger builds up with this whole entire system. And then they see someone who's basically attacking that system. That's where it's also a mental illness too. They're like, okay, let's get these guys. Look what they're doing to me. I couldn't get the treatment. I just went to the pharmacy and they said, I can't have that blood pressure medicine, but they'll give me something like a beta blocker, for example, blood pressure, which has side effects of depression. It has side effects of all kinds of sexual side effects.

7:25But I can't get the one that the doctor prescribed for me. So we're building up this anxiety and tension throughout the entire healthcare system. And that's what's creating a lot of this anger. Of course, it's never justified to hurt another human being. But the problem is when you repetally every day these little microattacks, whether at the pharmacy, the doctor's office, the denial of care, denial of surgery, I just had blood test, for example. The doctor wanted me to check certain things. And I got a thousand dollar bill because the insurance company said they're not covering certain blood tests. And that is generating this sort of micro boil. And that's how it explodes. And to this and also the way the media covers it, that's another issue. But there's another overall health in the United States. In the old days, we had the family unit. Grandma was around grandpa, this whole family unit. And if you look at every case of these women, for example, that you talked about who

8:27end up hurting their children, the family is not around. Their sisters, their brothers aren't down the block or up the block like we grew up or even if you grew up in Long Island, that people are the family spread out all over the country. And I see it even in practice all these years, the kids are not around to help the parents or when you have a new baby. There's no one around. If that woman had her parents around or in laws around with her, that wouldn't have happened. And that's also a reflection on our society as a whole that we need to bring the family unit closer together. And we need to tone down the level of anger and get our health care system to work a little bit more efficiently. But when you have time for a one hour show, I can give ideas on how we can improve the health care system and make it more efficient. Well, I want to talk about that for a second. I want to talk about the anger that's growing and brewing throughout this entire country. For example, and everybody, of course, will remember this one in the trial that's taking

9:33place the guy who was charged with assassinating Charlie Kirk. I mean, we're seeing targeted political violence now entering our courts of law. Don't forget what about the folks that took the shot at the president, not once, not twice, three times, four times. Here's a question I want to ask you. How do you try a case when the defense attempts to rationalize even political execution? I mean, that's what they're doing in the Charlie Kirk case. And what do you think the chilling precedent does that's being set right now for our country? Yeah, I think it's very dangerous. I think that the media needs to be much more conscious of the way they speak and talking about each other. You know, when I grew up as a kid in Brooklyn, I had friends who were from every political color race. I never we never thought about that. Everyone just tried to get along and say, you know, we're on this on this ship together

10:37and we're in this amazing great country. But instead we have a media that says this person, this black person, or this Muslim person, or this Jewish person. And then it just, it creates a lot of tension and all this ridiculous level of anti-semitism that's happening too. That also generates a lot of tension. So I think the media plays a major responsibility. And also people get upset and afraid and tense when they see all the law fair going on back and forth. It's just constantly attacked. You know, he did this. He did that. Let's destroy him. And it's all opposition research. And you know, that'll ask it stop. And you know, that's one of the reasons I've been a registered independent goal in my life because I don't do politics. And as you hear from any of my shows, I don't do politics. I go, do what can we do to help get along a little bit better, get the narrative to improve. And again, a lot of it comes down to the media, just the fact that we have media stations

11:40that are of extreme opinion, like you turn on, you click with the channel and you hear some event that occurred and you hear it on one station and then you hear it on another. And that's frightening to me. You think you're listening to completely different universes. You see, I say to everybody, I don't care if you liked Charlie Kirk. I didn't agree with much of what Charlie Kirk said. I didn't agree with a lot. I tell you what I do agree with. I agree with the fact that you're not supposed to be executed for your political thought. This Kim Tyler Robinson is being hailed by an entire left wing group, an ecosystem that thinks that the Tyler Robinson saved American civilization, that he saved our democratic republic. And I couldn't disagree with these idiots more. Right. What happens, Michael, is what's the number one disease in this country right now? It's mental illness. And when we started trying to save money by closing all these mental hospitals, we created

12:48a very big problem. And the other thing is that's why I tell people about Rikers Island right now, right now with the no cash bill reform. Basically, you don't even get a shower. You get thrown back on the street. What we need is one of the buildings that Rikers Island, for example, locally should be a mental health center. And then another building should be turned into a trade school where they can learn landscaping and handyman skills like the great sheriff, out in Suffolk County, sheriff, Tulan does. He actually trains them in landscaping when they get out. They have hope and opportunity. And we don't have the mental health, just like we got caught with our pants down with COVID because we had to think all the burger commission, which basically shut down many hospital beds and many psychiatric and ICU beds. And that's what happened. They had good intentions. They fought by saving money by closing thousands of psychiatric beds. But a lot of these people need help. They need big time, big time help. Dr. Meehulos, I want to talk to you finally last question.

13:50I thought something that's actually a little bit closer personal to me. I'm talking about that brilliant young woman yesterday who was killed and brought daylight in Times Square by someone, this woman's sister, who was known by to police in multiple different states who has and suffers with severe mental health. The reason I say it's close to me, she is the wife of an associate that works for a friend of mine's law firm. She was a brilliant young girl went to university, a Pennsylvania. I believe she was a lawyer as well. She was one of many vice presidents of, I think it was what, Bank of America. People are saying, well, how could she be so young? How could she be a vice? I don't understand how they could even be attacking her. But the question I really want to ask you in finality here is when the warning signs are always there. And they were there for this woman. Why is our public safety infrastructure completely paralyzed, completely paralyzed until an innocent

14:52person is literally murdered on the street? I can actually tell you because I've seen cases like that. What happens is a lot of times I bet you when we get the medical records that there was a medication change and when there's a medication change, those people have then let out on the street and then let's see what happens with the new medicine. Whereas I think that anybody who has that type of mental illness and they do a medication change, they should be in an inpatient facility which currently doesn't exist and insurance companies do not want to pay for it. And that's where we get into trouble that some of these people need to be in for like five days when they do a medication change to see how they react. And I've seen that and I used to see that in a right desire and the psychiatrists would change the medicine. They'd fly off a handle. The problem is that they're out on the street and they have access to a knife or a weapon. This is what happens. And then again, it goes back to the fact that we need as a society, we have priority portfolio dysfunction.

15:53We need to prioritize psychiatric health, the ability to get people into inpatient facilities, get them the help they need. And we're not being compassionate as a society, but especially for the drug rehabilitation and the mental illness we need to establish again, those inpatient facilities to help these people transition, especially if a doctor prescribes a medication change. They need close followups. And I think that that's what we're going to see when it all comes out with a medical record that either they're off meds, medication compliance is a big problem. With the inpatient facilities, you knew that they took the medicine. They had to stand online and you watched them take it. When they shut it and did it to outpatient, all these schizophrenics didn't show up for follow up and they don't show up. And we're not sure whether she even took her medication. So that's why as a society, and we also have to get the insurance companies to want to pay for these services and getting access.

16:54Even if you're in a fancy place like the Hamptons, there's no psychiatrist on coal out on the east end. You get a social worker or somebody else. You have to spend the money to put people who are psychiatrists and professionals so that people have access to care. If you have even one of your teenagers be compensated, it needs to go to an inpatient psychiatric hospital and it's a weekend in Manhattan. Good luck trying to get access to any kind of decent care or seeing an M.D. psychiatrist to get them help. So again, we need a major overhaul and a root cause analysis of these problems so that we can prevent them in the future. Okay. We see the devastating effects of what's going on right now. In America is captivated by a multitude of trials that in all fairness should never have taken place in the first place. Dr. Mehlos, let me thank you so much for joining, appreciate it. I got to have you back because again, unfortunately this stuff isn't stopping.

17:55It's not going to stop with these cases. Unfortunately, they're going to be more so we're going to have a lot more to talk about. Thank you very much for giving me opportunities. I try to explain things and you tell people out there, continue to think positive and test negative and keep listening to WABC for more interesting information. Thanks Dr. Mehlos.