Mental Health Gets Primetime Coverage on Longtime Broadcast

A new Talk Ten Tuesdays series on mental health debuts today, featuring internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. H. Steven Moffic.

The popular long-running weekly Internet broadcast Talk Ten Tuesdays, produced by ICD10monitor, will roll out a new series on mental health today, according to ICD10monitor Publisher and Program Host Chuck Buck.

Buck said the new series has been an idea he has been “kicking around in his mind” for some time now, noting that he is pleased that his friend, internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. H. Steven Moffic, will now be featured on the fourth Tuesday of every month.

“When I discussed my idea with Steve (Dr. Moffic), he was very enthusiastic and even had a name for the series: “Going Fo(u)rth with mental health,” Buck recalled. “Not only he did come up with the title, but he also offered the rationale that since the segment will air on the fourth Tuesday of every month, the ‘fourth’ refers to a ‘need to go forth to improve our collective mental health,’ Moffic told me.”

Buck said he was flattered when Moffic said the segment could not be more timely, given the traumatic and disruptive COVID-19 pandemic period.

Moffic also noted that June is national Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Month.

“Although we will continue to cover important breaking mental health news, as we have we have in the past – think Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, and transgender issues – our overall aim will be to focus on how we can successfully address the increased coding of the many ICD-10 and DSM-5 mental health disorders,” Buck said, referring to the psychopathologies suggested by the Z codes.

Buck added that the series is particularly relevant given recent polls and studies suggesting that the nation’s collective mental health is falling.

“At 34 percent, we are at our lowest reported rate of ‘mental excellence’ in 21 years,” Moffic explained. “Anxiety and depression are escalating in our youth, jeopardizing our country’s future, along with rising suicide rates. In adults, similar increases are occurring, along with growing prevalence of PTSD.”

Buck said that in previous discussions with Moffic on personal issues, Moffic told him about a new diagnosis: “prolonged grief disorder.”

“Serendipitously, prolonged grief disorder fits the unexpected escalation of losses of all kinds, but especially deaths, during the pandemic,” Buck said, recalling his conversation with Moffic. “Our social psychological problems of burnout, racism, cultish conspiracy theories, climate instability, gun violence, and political conflict, among others, are also detrimental to our mental health, but have received inadequate psychiatric attention.”

Moffic noted that there are potential ways to help improve our mental health, explaining that research suggests psychedelics are being better researched then they were in the 1960s – and the research suggests that in small doses, they are proven effective in reducing undue anxiety, hate, and intolerance, and at slightly higher doses effective in addressing resistant PTSD, depression, and death anxiety, when complemented by psychotherapy. 

“In this first installment in his monthly series, Dr. Moffic will review this country’s state of mental health with what he is calling a preliminary ‘Moffic Plan for a National Mental Health Recovery Program,’” Buck said, noting that Moffic is modeling the program after the economic recovery created by the Marshall Plan following World War II.

Buck added that Moffic will recommend that the current Presidential Administration appoint a Psychiatric General, to be on a par with our country’s Surgeon General – since, according to Moffic, all surgeon generals seem to have limited psychiatric expertise, insufficient to counter this country’s current mental health challenges.

Programming Note: Talk Ten Tuesdays airs today at 10 a.m. EST.