It is SO EASY…anyone can do it. Live your dreams.

This is a salty podcast for our life and times. Owen Scott Muir, MD writes the newsletter— The Frontier Psychiatrists!— he also records the podcast. I hope you enjoy this short.

I know what you're thinking. It is very flattering to get THE Newsletter author Owen Muir, M.D. sending you, whoever you are, a text message.

I always use the same format in those text messages. Everybody in senior leadership in medical devices uses the same format. I got a message just today from my colleague that I swear ripped off my format:

The first thing to clear up: I like people to message me on my clinical line. Using my Spruce Health number and not my personal phone. I always like to think it might be a patient.

The reverse is not true. I will only ever text you from phone numbers that are not mine. I will demand you to text me back promptly.

My good friend and cofounder at NTAPConnection does the same thing:

I like to know you're available to me. Anytime. I have a task I need people to help me with. It is always a split second. It is like being on standby for a super secret mission.

Robert does the same. This is our secret handshake. This is the way we know who is in the club and who isn't. If you're going to be down with people in medical technology, especially mental health, especially people who build cutting-edge artificial intelligence-guided tools to alleviate human suffering…

We need to know you're ready.

You need to be ready to do something now.

What thing?

I need you to get me a gift card.

The entertainment for me is knowing that you can be there for me. Knowing that you don't need to confirm my identity, that it doesn't matter how implausible a gift card is, that you'll drop everything and hustle over to Sephora, the Apple store, or something like that, and get any gift cards.

I love gift cards. I love them. I don't know; maybe it's a thing from childhood, maybe I'm just sentimental, maybe I like a trust fall. I'm not sure what it is. But I do know that I love gift cards. And I do know that I love coercing work colleagues into getting them for me. The less I know you, the better. The more implausible the request from me to you, the more I enjoy it.

I like making sure that whoever is getting me the gift cards I want is doing so based on a complete lack of diligence, good sense, credulousness, or any other human quality that might block the one thing I love most in the world— gift cards.

I love them from people I barely know. I love it when I get them for me just based on the text message, not based on hearing me on the phone. Please, do no confirming. Anything that I might know in real life? Verboten!

This is my dream. A world of endless gift cards on request at a moment’s notice, not based on any confirmation of our relationship or history together, just based on blind faith.

Ironically, this restores my faith in the world. Don't ask questions. Just give me gift cards. Thank you. Yes, it's me. It's always me. This is just the way I am. I'm the kind of person who asks for gift cards immediately. I need you to roll with it. Ironically, this restores my faith in the world. Don't ask questions. Just get me gift cards. Thank you. Yes, it's me. Yes I repeated those phrases. Not because it is a glitch. Again, I find my joy. It's absolutely always me, and always out of the blue. Please don't check with me. Don't ask. It will ruin the magic. Just get the gift card. And make sure you send it to exactly wherever they tell it to go because that's definitely me asking.

Sincerely,

A work colleague with poor boundaries.

This is a newsletter. It is written by a psychiatrist. Not actually plural psychiatrists. I am a suicide expert, much to my chagrin.

Today, I am reporting on the update I did see coming:

A total of 49,449 Americans died by suicide in 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

This is a 2.6% increase from 48,183 in 2021 and the highest number ever recorded, according to provisional numbers released in a new report from the federal health agency.

All the investments into “solutions” for “the mental health crisis”—absent compelling data to the contrary—have this one metric calling utter and total b******t.

Nothing we have done—objectively—has worked. More people are dead.

The irony is in the article about the topic, it advertised one of the things that—itself—is not working:

About 14% of the 23,000-plus Illinois calls made in April and May to the 988 crisis hotline were redirected to other states, per an analysis by health research outlet KFF.

Why it matters: When calls are transferred out of state, it becomes much harder for those specialists to locate nearby services for people in crisis.

We can’t address a crisis just by screaming about it being one. We can throw money at just anything and expect it to help.

If we addressed the problem of not enough gasoline for cars by filling the tank with water, and funding endless mobility hotlines, and startups to make matching platforms for the right place to fill you car with water, we would be unsurprised with the outcomes.

I’ll summarize my take—Current mental health treatment:

* Makes inaccurate diagnoses

* Prescribes wildly ineffective treatments

* Those treatments are delivered by individuals not trained meaningfully to address the problems we are facing

* We have effective treatments available.

* We refuse to pay for them as a system, instead paying for nonsense

* We refuse to respond to crisis in a way that is anything under that a failure

* We allow vampires to profit from Destroying emergency response nationally.

* And we stalk and penalize those who dare help those suffering the most.

It’s making a lot of money for private equity, VC backed children, and big health vampires. It is deeply unserious as an approach to a very, very serious problem. It’s not going to get better until we call a spade a spade. We need to, before the horror takes you too…

The Frontier Psychiatrists is a newsletter written by Owen Scott Muir, M.D. Much of the continent is humorous or satirical, but this piece is not. It's straight-up explanatory. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are related but distinct conditions. The point of this article isn't to go through every criterion in the DSM; it's to give people a sense of how I understand why this is a disorder that causes suffering. We should care more about it than we do.

https://thefrontierpsychiatrists.substack.com

This episode is part of my self-soothing parody sub-substack about the lord of the rings related parody content. This one features the lord of the rings! Please Leave a Review!

This is a parody podcast from the compliance/legal themed sub-newsletter, The Palantir of the Discoverable. It’s part of The Frontier Psychiatrists!

Love The Lord of the Rings, but wish it had more legal and HR content? Problem solved.

This photograph was taken of my father. It's the last picture I ever took of him. This is a story about why doing something now is better than waiting till it's perfect.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thefrontierpsychiatrists/p/the-last-photo-i-took-of-my-father?r=1ct8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

There are many new podcast versions of articles on the RSS feed…this is not a RECYCLED post. It’s a recycled radio appearance. Check out: Rethinking Heroes for your drug discount card.

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I had a little fun with this article on Borderline Personality Disorder, well beyond voice-over only. I hope it’s enjoyable, It’s worth noting I have some books on Borderline Personality Disorder by your author available at Amazon! Also, I wrote a chapter in this one!

And coedited this one: thanks for listening and reading!