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John Moe

Maximum Fun

Join host John Moe (The Hilarious World of Depression) for honest, relatable, and, yes, sometimes funny conversations about mental health. Hear from comedians, musicians, authors, actors, and other top names in entertainment and the arts about living with depression, anxiety, and many other common disorders. Find out what they’ve done to address it, what worked, and what didn’t. Depresh Mode also features useful insights on mental health issues with experts in the field. It’s honest talk from people who have been there and know their stuff. No shame, no stigma, and more laughs than you might expect.

Depresh Mode with John Moe

Anger can be a scary topic for a lot of people. It usually doesn’t feel good when you’re experiencing it and it can be associated with behaviors that are very frightening indeed. But Dr. Ryan Martin, who is one of the few academics specializing in anger and who has written two books about it, says anger is a normal and even beneficial emotion to experience. It’s your body’s way of indicating that some injustice has been done, either to you or someone else. And that’s good information to have. He says that if we can listen to anger for what it’s telling us about ourselves and our surroundings, without throwing punches, it can lead to a more balanced and thoughtful life and, in the end, a more peaceful life. He also shares why so-called rage rooms are not really good for your anger at all (it’s kind of like drinking in a bar to address your alcoholism) and how he’s taught his own kids to own their anger and process it.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Anger: Let’s Talk About It, Learn About It, Not Fear It, Use It For Good

It’s very easy to associate your job with your own sense of self. So it makes that it can be traumatic to be one of the scores of people being laid off in today’s turbulent economy. We are joined by the New York Times’ mental health reporter, Christina Caron, who has been looking at the effect of unemployment - especially long-term unemployment - on mental health. It can lead to more severe depression, anxiety, marital problems, and substance use. She also has some great tips on what you can do for your mental health if you’re in that situation.

Then we go to Burbank to talk with Terri Riviera who runs the Horror Community Foundation there. She organizes mental health support groups, led by a licensed therapist, that use horror movies to help people deal with depression, anxiety, and other mental problems. It sounds wild but the groups are very popular, well-attended, and backed up by science. Could it help you to watch The Shining in the company of friendly people and a therapist? Turns out, yes!

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Unemployment Hurts Mental Health, Horror Movies Might Help It. Really!

Maureen Johnson loves mysteries. Loves reading classic detective fiction and loves writing mystery stories, which young readers have been gobbling up for years. Some of Maureen’s stories feature teenage sleuth Stevie Bell, who, besides having a knack for solving cold cases, deals with an anxiety disorder. It’s not all there is to Stevie, of course, but it’s definitely there and she has to manage it on an ongoing basis. Maureen tells us about Stevie and about her own recent anxiety mystery when she was suddenly whomped by a massive wave of anxiety that would not go away and severely affected her life for quite a while. Faced with that mystery, Maureen got to work gathering clues to figure it out, ultimately finding many effective techniques, including to fighting the anxiety monster (which she visualizes as Gossamer, the big red furry monster from Bugs Bunny cartoons) but welcoming it, getting to know it, and finding out what made it tick. She also got some lab work done, which pointed to a pronounced iron problem that was fixable.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Maureen Johnson Became Friends with Her Anxiety Monster

Yes, the holidays are upon us. Getting together with family can be a wonderful, loving experience. It can also be a lot. There can be old grudges, chafing at family roles, the specter of politics might play in. We’re here to help. In This Family is a podcast produced by our host, John Moe, for Nexus Family Healing, a mental health nonprofit based in the Twin Cities. It’s all about the connections between family and mental health.

In this miniature episode, that show’s host, Dr. Michelle K. Murray goes over some good ways to manage your boundaries, take care of yourself, and have a good time. Dr. Murray is a licensed family and marriage therapist and CEO of Nexus Family Healing. Give this short episode a quick listen in the car on the way to see family and give In This Family a listen. You’ll find episodes with some Depresh Mode favorite guests like Maria Bamford and Gary Gulman and some new voices you’ll enjoy.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

A Holiday Family Survival Mini-sode

Cotard’s delusion, also known as Cotard’s syndrome, is an extremely rare condition where the patient believes that they are actually dead. For the bestselling author Esmé Weijun Wang, Cotard’s came along after she had already been traveling a difficult road that involved schizoaffective disorder along with a host of other mental health issues. While experiencing Cotard’s, Esmé urgently told her husband that he was dead too and so was their dog. She believed, was certain, that the life she was experiencing was kind of a simulation where she had to prove herself worthy of a second chance and not an eternity in Hell. We also hear about the shocking way Yale handled Esmé’s mental health and about the trauma very early in childhood that she thinks led to the complex PTSD that fueled a lot of her mental health challenges.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Esmé Weijun Wang’s Mind Convinced Her She Was Dead and In the Afterlife

You may find the charges in this episode jarring: depression is not the result of a chemical imbalance, SSRIs aren’t necessarily antidepressants, and the term you use for your mental health condition isn’t scientifically valid. Sarah Fay, author of Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses says it’s dangerous to identify with your diagnosis because it’s kind of made up and it blocks your path to recovery.
A doctor told her she was “an anorexic” when Sarah was 12 years old, even though she didn’t meet many of the criteria for anorexia. Sarah embraced the identity, taking on the behaviors and habits of a person with that eating disorder. Later in life, she was diagnosed with five more disorders, each time embracing the tag, all while her mental health deteriorated. Finally, another doctor said he didn’t know what was the matter with her and that gave Sarah some peace and a chance to focus on feeling better. She saw her mental makeup as something not bound by the names of disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by mental health professionals. While she still takes meds and sees a therapist and a psychiatrist, Sarah has come to believe that everyone’s focus needs to be on recovery rather than focusing on the limitations borne of terms she says are way too subjective and that don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Is Your Mental Health Diagnosis an Identity or Something More Meaningless?

Over half the employees at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) who were there in January are now gone, include 12 of the 17 senior leaders. SAMHSA is in charge of distributing and administering mental health programs around the country and the cuts to both staffing and to the programs the agency serves have meant many programs addressing addiction and suicide prevention being severely hobbled or shutting down altogether. In turn, that means fewer people getting help and more people suffering. O. Rose Broderick, Disability and Healthcare Reporting Fellow at Stat, joins us to explain the cuts, why they may be happening, and the extremely fragile state of these programs in America today. Rose also share her own connection to mental health, the struggles her own family has endured, and why all mental health stories are, at their heart, personal matters.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Personal Side of Huge Cuts to Addiction, Suicide Prevention, and Mental Health Programs

When we went looking for information on the condition known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, one of the first things we noticed was that some people aren’t even calling it that anymore. The website for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), for instance, uses the term “major depressive disorder with a seasonal pattern”, which means an acronym of MDDWASP. Here at Depresh Mode, we’re perfectly fine referring to it as “mud wasp”. On this episode of the show, we talk with NAMI’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ken Duckworth, about how it’s similar to and different from traditional depression and what one could do to deal with it. With Ken, we discuss the less common and less understood spring and summer variety of MDDWASP. We also hear from Joy and Christina from our Preshies group on Facebook about their experiences.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/

John’s acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is now available in paperback. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209566/thehilariousworldofdepression

Find the show on X @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.

John is on X @johnmoe.

Seasonal Affective Disorder and Why It Sucks So Bad

It’s a question we ask a lot on this show: do you have a mental health problem or is the problem actually rooted in the world you live in? Psychologist Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter says contemporary society lives under three different assumptions: there’s not enough to go around, kill or be killed, and us versus them or divide and conquer and this results in people valuing individualism, competition, and materialism. This way of living, he says, is a result of white dominance or whiteness and it is a distortion of the way humans are meant to live and therefore leads to things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and the brutality of human beings to one another. Dr. Lassiter, author of How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories says whiteness is not a mental health disorder but it is a mental health problem that we all need to face. Dr. Lassiter tells his own story, growing up with a chronic illness, gay, and Black in the South and eventually earning his PhD. in psychology. As he came to understand psychology and the way the world works, he noticed the impact of society’s built-in obstacles on his own mental health journey and among the students and clients he has helped.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Is Whiteness a Mental Health Problem? Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter Thinks So.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, clearly does not like SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), the most popular form of antidepressant on the market. They’re used by millions of Americans on a daily basis. He has tried to tie SSRIs to school shooters despite a lack of evidence to that effect. He has suggested that it’s harder to go off SSRIs than it is to quit heroin. It’s not. Molly Olmstead, a reporter for Slate who has been covering this story closely, says that this does not mean that the government is about to try to ban SSRIs and leave patients without the medicines that may be keeping them alive. But she explains that yes, we are in the midst of a very active anti-SSRI PR campaign by Kennedy and his supporters in the so-called Make America Healthy Again movement and that campaign could presage a much more aggressive set of actions.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group. 

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Is the U.S. Government Going To Take Away Your Antidepressants?

Depresh Mode with John Moe and Go Fact Yourself got together to celebrate MaxFun Block Party!

If you enjoyed this conversation we had with host J. Keith van Straaten, be sure to subscribe to Go Fact Yourself on maximumfun.org.

Meet the Neighbors: Depresh Mode with John Moe x Go Fact Yourself

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