27.1 Misdiagnosed and Overmedicated Kids with Kassondra Ola

[00:00:00] I was gaslit into thinking that I had not been misdiagnosed. And then I bought into the medication cycle, but then I got worse. So I was like constantly stuck between I'm right and I need to do this. And the doctors are right. I need to stay on it. And so like I went through a period of time where I was waffling on and off of psych meds myself. And I remember thinking to myself, the side effects of

[00:00:25] these medications are so bad. Whether I need them long term or not, whether I can get off of them or not, I feel bad for the people who cannot, who absolutely need them. Because the fact that they need to sacrifice their quality of life in order to remain safe with themselves and with society, it's unacceptable and it's awful. We've got to find better ways. Somebody get this guy some help.

[00:01:11] Or put more simply, if you need help like this guy, call your own doctor.

[00:01:47] So today on the podcast, I have Cassandra Ola or Cassie. You reached out to tell me a little bit about your story after I think you saw or heard my interview with Nicole Lamberson about benzo withdrawal and the problems with rapid detox in addiction facilities or just in general psychiatric drug

[00:02:12] withdrawal. Told me about your story. And I thought it's really important to share with others so that, you know, we can continue to educate people on how the healthcare system operates and specifically mental healthcare and help to prepare others better for their interactions with the healthcare system.

[00:02:36] Tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe how you became familiar with Nicole's story and how it helped you in your own journey. Yeah, I learned about her because I found Yosif Wood During's channel. I guess I went through so much with the psychiatric system growing up that I keep up with people who are

[00:02:59] coming out and talking about this stuff. Because of that, I became aware of the benzodiazepine coalition. I've just been following them since and they're very inspiring to me. It's very empowering to see people step out and talk about it. And I felt all alone in this until I found them and realized there was a whole community of people speaking up about it. And I guess it's easy to be isolated when

[00:03:28] you're dealing with the effects of this. And it can just be hard to get out and see what's out there and who else is out there when you're in the throes of survival and the aftermath. So I think that channels like that and groups that come together for raising awareness and trying to make a difference in society are so important, especially when utilized on social media,

[00:03:55] because it kind of brings people together. Absolutely. And I would add to that, that something I'm trying to get more and more comfortable with is being loud, being obnoxiously loud with the things that I'm saying, because Nicole and I talked about how there were a couple of prominent psychiatrists in the eighties and nineties, Malcolm later and Heather Ashton, who were very aware

[00:04:22] of, well, specifically problems with benzos. And they tried to sound the alarm and obviously we're not overall successful with that. I just feel like whether it's going to work or not, I don't know, but I think we have to take a different approach and really kind of like try to be almost like demanding of the attention that these problems deserve and the actual study of some of these things, as opposed to,

[00:04:52] you know, I'm going to do an eight week clinical trial and then I'll take you off of the drug and then I'll, you know, wipe my hands clean and say, yeah, no problems here. But that's not how drugs work. You got to monitor them for years, for decades on population levels to really, truly, fully understand their safety and effectiveness profiles. That's not usually a lucrative way to study drugs for pharmaceutical

[00:05:21] companies. It's unfortunate because that's bad science to not do that. I mean, it's like nobody stopped to think about whether or not, you know, these drugs could have really bad effects over long periods of time. Like that's short sighted, I believe. It just makes no sense. I know. And I think there are a lot of people that have tried to get out of head of this and tried to study

[00:05:48] these or that worked on, you know, the serotonin system, for example, a guy like David Healy, who from the get go was saying there may be more problems with this class of drugs than we're, you know, letting on. But I think a lot of those people kind of like we were talking about before we started recording, there's a lot of silencing of the voices that cut into profits. And what I'm trying to do here is go independent and

[00:06:16] talk to some of the most prominent names in the field, talk to patients about what specifically has happened with them and just try to give people maybe a little bit more objective information to review on the field of psychiatry as a whole. That's very important. And I'm glad you're doing that. We do have to become independent and form our own thing because I don't know if we're really going to

[00:06:43] be able to make enough of a change like within the system as it is to start putting people over profit. We just kind of have to do it ourselves. I think that's my personal opinion. Yeah. Now, did you say that knowing that my tagline is progress over profit? No, I had no idea. Like you mentioned earlier, I mean, the reason why I went into the field of medicine on a very general

[00:07:10] level was to like over a lifetime grow in my understanding of the complexities that are medical and mental health symptoms and problems. It wasn't to push drugs on people or create a system of knowledge and then never update it. This is a really nebulous field in terms of mental health.

[00:07:37] People have been trying to figure out how to describe and classify mental health problems for a long time. And there's not a unified theory of how we develop different symptoms or conditions. So if for no other comment on it, the certainty that is displayed by some drug makers and some

[00:08:03] professional organizations just doesn't make sense in the historical context of all of the great philosophers and psychologists and psychiatrists that have touched on just the issue of like, what is mental illness? How do we define this? How do we, you know, find objective ways to measure it? But you get into it and you realize the system as a whole is not predicated on advancing our understanding.

[00:08:32] It's to bring in the dough. Yep. It's like people. Yep. Bring in the dough. Here's a great metaphor or analogy for what our healthcare system is predicated on. It's kind of like you have a polluted river and you could go about cleaning up the pollution out of that river in two ways. You can take each liter of water out, remove the pollution and put the water back in. Yeah.

[00:09:02] But ultimately that water after it's been cleaned will become repolluted after a period of time. Right. The other option is to go upstream, find the source of the pollution and stop it right at the source. Immediately after you do that, the river is still going to be polluted, aka the person is still going to have symptoms. But over time, because you've cut off the source of the pollution,

[00:09:32] gradually that waterway will become less and less polluted because you've gone to the source. Nice. You could also try both ways. You could cut off the source and take the water out and filter it and put it back in. Yes. So if you have a fever and a headache from an infection, you could take ibuprofen to manage the fever and headache now, but also take an antibiotic that will address the root cause

[00:10:00] of the infection so that you don't end up with a lifetime cycle of just taking ibuprofen for the symptom and never actually addressing the underlying infection. It's the same way with psychiatric medication. When the genetics of the person will tolerate them, because some people just don't at all, you can use them short term, but focus on the main cause, work on those so that the person doesn't slowly decline from having a chemical

[00:10:30] in their system long term. When you use them longer term, whatever good that they may possibly do, it's going to be outweighed in the long term by the deterioration. You can't just put in something into your body that isn't natural to your body and keep it there and expect there to be no consequence. It's just science.

[00:10:53] Yeah. Adam Jurado is an OBGYN up in Northeast US. I think he's Harvard trained, I believe. He has a tagline and he's been on Mad in America. He's been on Renegade Psych. His tagline is chemicals have consequences. And part of informed consent on my end is to notify the

[00:11:16] patient of the known consequences and the potential consequences and all of the unknown stuff. I love that you said long term. That's the job here is to help people find stability in the long term. As you know, I mean, chemicals have consequences. And when a chemical makes you feel something in the short term, it's easy for our minds to lock that in like, oh, this is effective.

[00:11:46] But that's not what most patients and most people want. If you give them the choice between I can give you short term relief or I can give you long term stability. Almost everybody's going to choose the long term stability route. Exactly. And it's not to pill shame at all. I remember when I was, I think at the time I was on double the medication I had started with and I was trying to come off

[00:12:08] and I was almost kindling. But I hadn't yet realized the magnitude of how much I had been right about not having, I was misdiagnosed by the way, but I was gaslit into thinking that I had not been misdiagnosed. And then I bought it into the medication cycle. But then I got worse. I was like constantly stuck between I'm right and I need to do this and the doctors are right, I need to stay

[00:12:34] on it. And so like I went through a period of time where I was waffling on and off of psych meds myself. And I remember thinking to myself, the side effects of these medications are so bad, whether I need them long term or not, whether I can get off of them or not, I feel bad for the people who cannot, who absolutely need them. Because the fact that they need to sacrifice their quality of life in order to

[00:13:01] remain safe with themselves and with society, it's unacceptable. And it's awful. We've got to find better ways. So like in the moment, you know, like, as I was going through that, I had no judgment towards people who needed the medications. I still don't. We're in the process, I feel, of discovering better ways for a lot of these really difficult mental health diagnoses like schizophrenia, bipolar, multi personality. You know, as we go through this interview,

[00:13:31] I don't want anybody to feel guilty or pill shamed. Just know that like, one way or the other, whether you choose medications right for you or not, like we're looking for ways to better your treatment. We're looking for ways to kind of replace some of this stuff. We're not here to shame anybody. Yeah, absolutely not. And I know that in my own clinical practice, I can sense that feeling

[00:13:59] coming out in some of my encounters with patients, especially in that like initial interview. And if I sense that, I always try to tell somebody, look, I know what it may sound like, but I promise you, I'm coming from a place of wanting what is best in the longterm for every patient or every human being. Like that is what I am going for. And it doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect with it, but that's my

[00:14:25] intention for having this conversation with you. That the symptoms that you're experiencing, because we get trained as humans, as patients to expect another medicine to be added to manage the latest symptom. And I don't want my patients to have accumulating regimens where you could be the best psychopharmacologist in the world. But when you have five or six psych meds on board at the same

[00:14:54] time that are all impacting same and different systems in the brain, you're going to stretch beyond the limits of your understanding. And that's not even considering all the things we don't know about neuropsychopharmacology. Yes, it's definitely something that is evolving, I would say. Like we're constantly learning new things and adjusting what we thought we knew. I really do appreciate you being

[00:15:21] here, being willing to tell your story. I know that it's not the easiest thing to do, especially repeatedly. One of the aspects of psychiatry that has been the most disturbing to me over the past couple of decades is this increasing willingness to treat medication wise young kids and adolescents.

[00:15:45] It used to be a commonly accepted philosophy that mental disorders like bipolarity or schizophrenia are developmental in nature and that they don't really fully manifest until puberty and after as the brain continues to develop. A 2015 review by Mojtabai et al observed an increase in psychotropic

[00:16:10] medications for 12 to 17 year olds from 11.2% in 2005 to 13.6% in 2014. Another 2020 review of Medicaid insured youths showed a 14 fold increase in antidepressant medication use in children or use

[00:16:30] under age 20. It was 0.2% in 1987, nearly 3% in 2014 and almost 13% of foster care youths received an antidepressant. A 2015 study revealed that 1.2% of Medicaid insured youths under four years old were on a psychiatric medicine. And I also remember seeing and working with a person who was on this study,

[00:16:58] Kentucky specific study that showed that 2.5% of Kentucky youths, these are kids I think under six years old were on an antipsychotic, which is just appalling to me. That's just, that's too young. It is difficult to see these things happening and to feel in a way

[00:17:22] somewhat helpless about it. And again, why it's so important that you are here, that you do tell your story. And I know that this information, it speaks to your story and your mission. There's so many overlapping symptoms of these DSM defined psych diagnoses that so many kids are going to meet the criteria for so many different disorders. But in reality, accurately diagnosing things, especially in

[00:17:51] kids, it doesn't take days or weeks. It takes years, sometimes decades of monitoring the course of the symptoms over time of getting as much information as you can about the family history or the genetic profile. And definitely considering all the social factors that contribute to the diagnosis. Can you tell us a little bit about how you were misdiagnosed or maybe the more accurate term, maybe polydiagnosed

[00:18:21] starting at a young age? Yes. And I will do my best. I'm going to try to be as orderly as possible. I may have to try a few times to get everything. It's a very emotional experience for me. No matter how many times I practice, it's still, it's still hard. But yeah, so when I was, I was young, I was, well,

[00:18:46] it's easy to get a little tongue tied when bringing this stuff out. But yeah, when I was born, I was born into a struggling marriage. My family, like my mom and dad, they were talking about divorce before I was born, but they found out that my mom is pregnant. And so they wanted to stay together and make it work for me. So I was born into a marriage that was strained, but they tried to do the right thing. And then I ran

[00:19:13] into some, I guess, emotional and sexual abuse at different stages of my childhood. And I guess that loaded something for me that kind of, I guess it just kind of hyper-sexualized me early and gave me an unhealthy interest at a younger age. And I grew up in a conservative church-like environment. So

[00:19:41] that kind of behavior was kind of frowned upon. And I was also like, looking back now, I was showing a lot of signs of high functioning autism spectrum disorder, but I was born in the 1990s and not a lot was known about that in women. So I was basically struggling with my environment, unhealthy family

[00:20:05] dynamics and abuse and trauma from a neurodivergent point of view perspective. And it got confused as, I guess, bipolar disorder. My mom knew something wasn't right, but she couldn't make sense of the behavior. So she got me tested. I didn't really know how to answer the questions. So I kind of

[00:20:33] filled them out wrong, I would probably say. I put what I thought people would want me to say or what I'd heard other people describe, not necessarily what felt true to me. And I mean, I was like nine or 10 years old, so had no idea how life was gonna work. I don't even know if I was self-aware enough to fill out that form at that age, quite honestly, all the like questionnaires they do for this diagnosis stuff, like to be honest. And with autism spectrum disorder, you're often emotionally behind

[00:21:01] anyways. So. Do you remember what the overall kind of time spent on the evaluative process of like, what is going on here? How do we get to an accurate, you know, I always say diagnosis because there's just so much overlap. I don't know that we can really categorize each of our different

[00:21:26] conditions as existing by itself. Do you have any recollection of like how long or how much detail was put into trying to create more accuracy and diagnosis before starting with treatments? You know, yeah, I think they just did like a couple sessions. They put like maybe a few hours into asking personal questions. And then they gave you the tests and the questions and stuff. And

[00:21:53] they did do like an open MRI for me of my brain, and I still have it from before medications. And I'm hoping and praying science advances to the point that maybe one day that'll be useful for research because that was my brain before psychiatric medication. Have you gotten any MRIs since then? Yeah, I think there probably is a way to tell. I just think that maybe it has yet to be discovered or

[00:22:20] something like that. Were they able to see any major differences in your MRI? No, but I don't think I found anybody who looks at it critically enough to know. And I found a concussion place out somewhere in the Midwest or something, but I could never come up with the money. And they seem to look at that more critically, but they were looking for more, I guess, brain injury type things. But I had a feeling that they'd be able to tell the nuances from the drugs, like they would find something that most

[00:22:50] typical professionals aren't trained to look for because they were like one of those outside the box, little niches, I guess. Yeah. But it was like $1,000. Yeah, because radiology is like everything else. If you don't critically think about things, then you might miss some things. Yeah, I've got one from an MRI from when I was like a kid before the

[00:23:15] medications. I've got one from when I was still on the medications. And then I've got several MRIs from the various years of being off. So I'm about, let's see, I came off around 2012, I think, like summer of 2012 is when I like came off too fast and then went through like a protracted withdrawal. So you can literally see like if there's been any recovery, if the sort of damage is visible on an MRI.

[00:23:45] I wish I had known about to push for different types of imaging, like SPECT or CT with contrast. Like I wish I had more of that nature. I even went to NIH and I was in an autism study. They did some kind of imaging. I don't know if I have that, but. Yeah, it'd be great to have like fMRI connectivity studies because I think that is really the future

[00:24:09] of imaging, especially in psychiatry or psychiatric conditions is to be able to see where are the abnormalities in the connectivity between different regions. And really probably one of the things I'm most interested in is the connectivity with what we were talking about is the mind or the more centralized brain components and that frontal lobe conscious self that checks all of our behavior before we go and engage in it.

[00:24:37] Yeah, that would be so good. I think we need to start that now. Like we just need to have some studies where they're doing that incrementally with a group that has no meds and with a group of kids that do. And if they're going to be putting six years olds on that stuff without doing these studies, track it. It's like, I'm actually really angry that people. I hear you. They can't educate the children without doing adequate studies. There's all of this information out there

[00:25:03] to help you study the brain and the effects on the nervous system and the body and nobody's doing it. They're just drugging them. That's outrageous. That's crazy. Like that's obviously a cash cow. Exactly. And because it doesn't make money and all that you're going to find from it are things that cut into profits. But I agree with you. I mean, it is so frustrating and it does really induce anger.

[00:25:28] You know, I try to take that anger and filter it into things that don't fix the problem immediately, but hopefully get to the source of the pollution, right? Yes, exactly. It can be a source of motivation and positive change when you channel it properly. If you don't channel or manage it properly, it'll destroy you. So anger is definitely, it's a force to be reckoned with.

[00:25:53] Oh yeah. I know that you got the bipolar diagnosis around age 10 and then tell me about kind of the progression of treatment. So they started me on Zoloft. That was the first medication they gave me and I had a rash with that. So they switched me and I don't have like the list of medications in order, but they started,

[00:26:17] I guess, adding antipsychotics. And I think they tried me on a few anti-anxiety medications at some point, but the anxiety didn't really start until well after I was on the medications, to be honest. Like I started developing like a weird, strange chemical anxiety, but at the time I wasn't aware that it was the drugs. Like all I remember is being really conscious and dealing with a lot of distress.

[00:26:42] And then there was just this time where like things just felt like a dark blur. And then I woke up to myself and I was just like completely different. I just felt like tired. I felt shy. It was almost like the lighting was different. Like, I don't know how to explain it. I just felt like someone had taken my consciousness and shoved it deep inside myself. And almost like I was looking through a small light outside of a cave. Everything changed. I don't know whether that's

[00:27:12] disassociation or like, what do you even call that? Almost like the lens with which you're viewing the world had been replaced with, with something different than normal. Absolutely. Yeah. And I wasn't as present and it was just so bizarre to me. And I was just like really timid, really anxious, really unregulated. And it just got worse. And I didn't even realize

[00:27:37] that the medications could change you that much. I remember like struggling with attention span before medications. But when I applied myself, I would get really good grades. And once I started focusing, I focused really well. After medications, I noticed that my cognitive performance started going down. And I would sit there and I would try to make sense of material. And I would just go over and over and I just couldn't get it. And I couldn't keep up. So it slowed things down for me tremendously.

[00:28:07] At times, like during middle school, like eighth grade, like I would have to look at my peers work in order to get assignments done. Because it's not that I was lazy and didn't want to do the work. It's like I couldn't do the work. I would try, but nothing would happen. So I was just losing my cognitive capacities. And I didn't know what to do. And it made my behavioral problems worse. Like it turned

[00:28:33] me into like a head case. Another thing that happened early on with me is one of the medications made me binge eat and binge eat and binge eat to the point my mother had to lock the closets because I would eat anything, whether it was raw, like raw pasta, like whatever, I would eat anything. And I just wouldn't stop eating. And my mom says I never really got that big. But I remember being like a really thin person, maybe just with a little bit of a gut issue. So like, I think I probably

[00:29:00] would need some physical therapy for core strength or something like that. But I was otherwise really thin. And I just remember like after a few weeks of being on medication and going through this binge eating, I had like little bits of fat just falling off. You could see like this thin arm and then just fat coming off. And it just happened really rapidly. And it was like on my legs. And my friend actually had a photo she showed me like later when we were an adult. And I looked at that and I cringed. I was

[00:29:29] like, whoa, because we were at the pool and you could just clearly see it. But it was just such a huge change for me. And it happened so fast. And I still have stretch marks. And that was happening on the precipice of puberty for me. So it really threw me for a loop with my self image, my confidence. Because I was already struggling socially. Like prior to medications, I was bullied because of autism spectrum manifestations. I just wasn't like everybody else. And they knew it.

[00:29:58] And now, you know, I was starting to make friends. And now they put me on these medications, making me act weirder. You know, I'm gaining weight. Just making an already confusing time in life that much more confusing. There's all kinds of biological changes that are occurring with puberty that, you know, things may have stabilized after

[00:30:23] puberty. Like ADHD is a great example. There, you know, are some kids who have delayed maturation of dopamine tracks to the frontal lobe. But a lot of those kids are just developing a couple of years later than maybe most of their peers. We may just need to have a little bit more patience with their development. Do you remember maybe the first time where you were on a medicine

[00:30:47] and then you went back and the response was, let's add something else? I actually don't remember that process. I think the drugs were affecting me and I was so shut down from the life stresses. Because I do want to mention that like before this changed my body, shame that I was having an unhealthy obsession because of the sexual trauma that took place with

[00:31:11] me. So now my appearance is being ruined and my behavioral problems are getting worse from the medications. And now I'm even more ashamed of my own sexuality, you know, in a sense. And this is a time where you're supposed to be making sense of it. And it's not supposed to, it's not necessarily easy, but it's not supposed to be this hard, you know, this humiliating.

[00:31:34] And I can only imagine that you probably felt like you didn't have a voice sitting in the doctor's office with that person who, you know, represents an authority figure when you had already been wronged by authority figures and, you know, very trapped and almost silenced. Do you know when that process actually took place for me, what you're describing?

[00:31:59] When I started waking up in high school, like, okay, so this started when I was 10. And so around 14 and 15 and 16, somewhere between there, that's when I wake up and I'm cognizant enough to realize something's happened to me. I speak out about it. Nobody's listening. Then I start feeling that. So I didn't even reach that point of consciousness until high school, which is amazing on these drugs.

[00:32:25] I've developed that at all. You know, I really do believe that that emergence of consciousness that comes with puberty is paramount to understand any developing mental health condition that may exist. I feel for you with that. And I just do want to reiterate that because again, we have minds that focus on the negatives. There's no way around it. It's what they do. Survival focus. And so I say this

[00:32:53] because I know with my own inherent struggles and how, you know, my mind operates, like what you're doing right now, right here is so important, right? It's not easy, but it's so important to continue to help you heal. And also to, you know, by putting yourself out there, you are undoubtedly helping other people. It doesn't mean you'll know about those people that you've helped,

[00:33:23] but you're helping another nine or 10 year old, 15 year old. Again, I just know our minds aren't like, Hey, you're doing a great thing. Congrats. So we got to point those things out to each other. Yeah. And I'm happy to share because I really want people to know how horrendous this can be for children. And I want people to know how confusing and just gut wrenching my childhood was

[00:33:48] on these drugs. I didn't know who I was because the medic, like I thought I was bad because I didn't realize as I was going through this, that the meds were lowering inhibition. They were making me more susceptible to certain issues. And I'm glad that certain things took place in the safety of childhood and didn't happen in adulthood on these drugs, because I've heard of people actually ending up in jail from the side effects of these medications. And so I felt very lucky. My parents may have had

[00:34:17] their hands full, but they did a lot of things right. Despite all of this. I remember one time we had something called eighth grade graduation and the seventh graders would hold candles for the eighth graders as they went down the aisle. And I remember that on one of my medications, I was tremoring and they thought it was just going to go away. So they left me like that for like way too long, like a couple of months. And it was mentioned actually, I ended up hospitalized at some point. And they were like, I can't believe they didn't take this off sooner. I was like going

[00:34:47] through my, my records, my psych records. And I was like, the hospital was like, why have they left her like this? You know, it was just completely messed up. But I was, I was standing there and I was shaking so bad for the eighth grade graduation, holding the candles for the class that was graduating. The wax was dripping off the candles and burning my hands. I remember going on school field trips and being made fun of and bullied for the digestive issues that were caused by some of

[00:35:16] these meds. Like between sixth and fifth grade, like if I dropped a pencil, I would go, I would overreact and be like, I dropped it! Like just weird behavior. Like I became the laughingstock. I literally started acting weird and like, you know, like the person who would like butter off of the thing in public with no shame. And I'm like way too old for that. Like I regressed. There was a period of time and it was humiliating. It was embarrassing. Like I'm under the

[00:35:46] complete impression that poly drugging children is child abuse. Cause you know, what does this do to kids? Can you imagine? How many, uh, different medications do you at the peak of being poly drugged? Do you think you were on at the same time? Anywhere between four to seven, I would say. Thanks again for watching and or listening. If you're passionate about the subjects that I discuss

[00:36:15] on the channel, do me a favor and like comment, subscribe, do whatever you can to make your voice heard that these are problems that must be addressed in our society. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, I want to hear them. Feel free to reach out on social media or email us at

[00:36:40] renegadesyke at gmail.com. And if you'd like to be a guest of the show, or you have a connection to somebody that you think would be a good guest, let us know. Thanks again for listening. Disclaimer. This podcast is for informational purposes only. The information provided in this podcast and related materials are meant only to educate. This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. While I am a medical doctor and many of my guests have

[00:37:08] extensive medical training and experience, nothing stated in this podcast nor materials related to this podcast, including recommended websites, texts, graphics, images, or any other materials should be treated as a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All listeners should consult with a medical professional licensed mental health provider or other healthcare provider if seeking medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Or put more simply, you need help like this guy, call your own doctor.