Psychiatry Podcast Episodes

Welcome to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Today, we have a guest with us in our studio, Dr. Aaron Plattner. That sounds so official. I appreciate that. So, you are a psychiatrist, and we’ll talk a little bit about what you do and the services you provide here to ACCFS. 

But I want to take this opportunity to allow you to speak into this sphere of mental health as well because you’ve got a unique skill set and a unique study behind what you do. But let’s start even before the credit class of psychiatry 101. What’s the difference between psychiatry and psychology, and what do you bring to the table? 

Sure, sure. Good question. And I think a lot of people get confused about psychology or psychiatry. Both treat mental illness, but in different ways. Psychologists are those who go to school and then either get a master’s in psychology or maybe a PhD. They’ll do more of the family therapy or individual therapy, those sorts of things. A psychiatrist is someone who goes to undergrad medical school and then at some point during medical school decides to go the route of psychiatry versus someone else goes the routes of surgery or pediatrics or whatever. 

Part of psychiatry is therapy so we are taught the same sorts of thing as therapy, but the one difference is that as a medical doctor from med school you can actually prescribe medications when appropriate and a psychologist cannot do that. So, that’s probably the biggest difference. The real tension lies in whether this needs to be treated by therapy or does this need to be treated by medication? 

I would say there’s probably a combination of both. So, the beautiful thing about ACCFS is I’m the psychiatrist but pretty much everyone I see has a psychologist or a therapist so we can bring those two together. Try to blend them. Yeah. To try to find the best treatment and the best help. I would imagine, as a Christian, this journey of studying the mind, studying the brain, how medication, behavior, environment, as you mentioned, all blends together. There are some real gray areas. 

I think, as a believer, there’s some tension here to say, what is the Spirit and what is biology? Can you bring us along a little bit and give the Cliff Notes version of the journey you’ve had to help us maybe better understand psychiatry. It has been a journey. I think in any sort of area you look at you’re going to have people on the extremes. It is all this or it is all that and the problem is nothing is that simple. 

So, the way I hope to pursue or look at an illness or someone’s condition is basically four different potential options. One is that it can be physiological, and that’s basically more of a biological thing. So, if someone has low thyroid, they’re going to be very tired. And so, we wouldn’t really necessarily give them medicine for depression. 

We’d fix their thyroid. We give them thyroid medication. I think most Americans are not getting as much sleep as they should. That’s across the board. And I’m guilty of that as well. But if we’re not getting good, 7-9 hours of sleep at night, our bodies are tired. And when we get tired, we get cranky, and we get a little bit more irritable. 

That’s not something we need to treat with medicines. You need to get good sleep. And those things bear themselves out in our spiritual walk. Very true. That stems back to exhaustion. Yes. You think of Elijah. He had this great mountaintop experience with the Prophets of Baal. And you know, he’s on this high and then Jezebel wants to get him, and he says, you know, I want to die. And the first thing the Lord does is give him food. Here’s some food. You know, you just wonder if he was somewhat exhausted and tired. His sugar levels were not right. Sugar levels were very low, but God is just going to his physiological needs and then encourage him. So, that’s the first one.  

The second one is a moral basis. David talks in the Psalms about how God’s wrath weighed heavy on him and that was crushing to him. And as we see the nation making its choices, it was really interesting that the state of Utah recently said that pornography is a public health crisis and there was an article in the Washington Post that basically said, pornography is causing problems with people’s relationships, which is making people unhappy, so we see a moral thing leading to unhappiness. 

Immoral lifestyles have their Consequences. They do. And society has seen those consequences and is raising the issue that this is not a good thing. Right. And so, to your point, we have a bucket of biology. Our biology is out of kilter. And then there’s also a bucket in our life of morality, which is simply, this is the way God said it would be if we don’t do this or do this. Which is true. And I think it’s by his mercy that we have this moral bucket that when I’ve sinned against my brother or my neighbor or something that it causes an emotional response of the Lord saying, hey, this isn’t right. You need to go back, and you need to make that right. You need to change it. 

And so, even as a psychiatrist, that would be one lens that you would look at and say, do we have a body issue that needs to be tweaked or adjusted? Or do we have a moral issue here that this is a heavy conscience and that is the emotional response. What’s a third bucket? A third bucket would be more of my line of just a mental condition. And this is very tricky as well and takes discernment because we do not have a blood test or an x-ray that we can look at and say, your levels of depression are high. Essentially, I sit down with someone, and ask them questions and after asking them questions, we can come up with a group of symptoms that can be described by a particular condition. 

So, this is borne out by what’s called twin studies. So, they took biological twins who were adopted. One was raised in California, and one was raised in Connecticut. So, just across the nation and they have a group of them and then they said, okay, if this one has a chance of having this condition, what’s the chance of the twin having that same condition even raised in totally separate environments? 

And what they found is if one of the twins had a certain psychiatric illness, the other twin had a much larger chance of having that than the general population. So, there is a biological component that we see in these twin studies. And those results are statistically significant in the sense that we shouldn’t see this connection by just a random chance. 

That would be correct, especially because they’re raised in different environments. But I think we all see within ourselves, our family members, different temperaments. You know, some people just tend to be happier and always a bit more joyful. Some people tend to be a little bit more anxious, and some people maybe tend to have a little bit more despair or depression leaning. And even when we look at the moral or physiological, we see that they seem to be walking uprightly and they seem to be medically okay, or stable or healthy. That’s when they can come to me and so we can address them in one of two ways. One is with medication and the other one would be with therapy, talking these things through or having a combination of both of those.  

You have the physiological part, and you talked about sleep and such. You have the moral bucket of are we trespassing against God’s commands? That’s why we are feeling certain ways. There’s a psychological piece, which is really what your professional experience would indicate in terms of what’s happening in the brain that’s leading us that way. 

And then there’s a fourth. What’s the fourth? Paul says we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against principalities, which is a term for a demonic kind of hierarchy. And I think in our Western culture, the topic of demons and those sorts of things make people very anxious and nervous and they don’t feel comfortable talking about it. We’re really okay with angels, but once you talk about demons, that’s a whole other book or a whole other area. I think worldwide, other cultures will see demons as something more accepted. And in fact, I was just in a conversation last night with a mission outpost down on a different continent, and there was a situation there, and their default was to very quickly go to the demonic realm. And when some of the onlookers who relayed this story were thinking in the psychiatry bucket a bit more. So, all of that to say, these areas get blended and there’s really quite a bit of discernment needed. I just want to put out there as well and assert here that greater is he that is within us than he that is in the world. 

And so, there’s a tremendous answer even for that. scary bucket, right? Yes. In Christ. To our listeners who don’t know your background, you are in a full-time practice removed from ACCFS. That’s correct. So, we tap you for a couple hours a week. Yes. And so, when you speak about these issues, your clientele is much broader than this agency. That is correct. I do some inpatient work, so I have an inpatient population that comes into the psychiatric hospital, and I work with them and their families in a more urgent, acute setting, and then send them out to other people. And then ACCFS is an opportunity to do some outpatient work with the people that are not in the hospital and are a bit more stable.  

So, let’s go into the psychiatry bucket because that is your area of expertise. Talk to us a little bit about the brain. What have you learned about the brain? What are we learning about the brain in terms of thoughts and emotions and all that? Now, remember, this is 101 here. 

Yes, 101. Okay. Got it. So, the brain is very, very complicated. I think it’s fearfully and wonderfully made. What we know is that different areas of the brain interact with each other to make our bodies move, feel, and function. So, the front part of the brain, your forehead, that’s the frontal lobe. So, that is the part that develops last, because as we grow, our brains are developing. That is our higher-level thinking, that’s our ability to focus and concentrate. That’s our ability to take complex things and put them together.  

You just explained a great deal about the behavior of my children. So, it hasn’t fully developed, did I hear you right? That is correct. Excellent. Great to know. Yes. That was the takeaway. Everyone rest assured that your teenagers are still developing their ability to make the right decisions. So that frontal part is a little bit like the brakes of your brain that says, whoa, let’s think about this a moment. Slow down. Let’s process through this. That’s a great analogy. 

What’s another part? We just go right into the middle. That is more of our emotional part. So, there’s an area of our brain called the limbic system. If we talk about the frontal lobe being the brake, that deep limbic system, that’s the gas. That is what makes us charged. And that can be good. I mean, if there’s an emergency, someone’s house is on fire, you want to be charged. 

You want to be active, to take action, to do things. So, we need that part of the brain to keep us going in certain situations. In a case like that where there’s a fire or something, you might actually do something that the front part of your brain would say no, don’t do that, but you need to do it and so it charges ahead. That is very true and so once again the balance of the front and that inner part interacting together to find that balance of when to turn it on and when to back off. 

Yeah, so the limbic system is probably the primary one that can malfunction or doesn’t work right that a psychiatrist would be more apt to address. Sometimes medications can bring calmness to that area that can allow people to then move through with therapy or move through with working through those mood symptoms. We can look at that area on CT, which is a scan, or we can look at different scans or an MRI. There are other studies called PET studies, which light up in different colors as the brain gets active or not active. And so, what we can see is different people with different mood symptoms have different levels of things light up or not light up that should be. 

So, it gives you an idea that this is what should be lighting up, given the situation, but this is not. Over here is what’s lighting up. Exactly. You’re driving in traffic and you’re in a city and you don’t know where you’re going. You need to be a little anxious to make sure you don’t miss your exit. Yeah. Because that’s horrible. And I think we all have family vacations of dad missing the exit. What that creates in the whole car sorry dad, but that’s a good thing about being anxious. But what you can see if you could take someone and do a scan at that point of that anxiety, that’s healthy anxiety. 

You’ll see certain things lit up now someone who’s just anxious on a daily basis, those areas are still lit up, but there’s no reason that they should. And if it’s lit up too long, it can lead to all sorts of physical tiredness, burnout, which is bad choices, not sleeping well, which feeds into not sleeping well. 

So, your symptoms get worse. And it’s this horrible loop that you can start to create and to get out of that loop can be very, very difficult. Yeah. So that’s where sometimes medications can go in there and calm things down so that people can right some things and then move forward and be able to reverse the loop that is made or created. 

What is being lit up and what is the medication? And I know neurotransmitters have something to do with this, right? Is there a way that you can make sense of it? Essentially, we have a couple different neurotransmitters. One is norepinephrine which is basically the excitatory one. This gets us excited, which is good. So, if you’re studying or in church, you want your norepinephrine to be turned on a little bit so you’re not falling asleep. Like, you’re active and you’re engaged and you’re focusing. When that becomes maybe a little bit too much turned on in different areas, people can be overly anxious.  

And is that a chemical? It is a chemical, so when a neuron wants to talk to another neuron basically a signal is sent through something like norepinephrine, which then goes to another cell and says, I want you to do this, or I want you to do that. Okay, so this neurotransmitter is a transmitter. It is a messenger in a sense. 

It’s a messenger. It takes the message to the next neuron and makes those connections. So, neurotransmitters are just like emojis. Okay. In a way, that’s right. Okay. That’s a good example. Hey, I’m getting this. This is simple. I think I could do your job any day. So that’s norepinephrine. 

The other one is serotonin, and that tends to be more associated with depression. That for some reason, with all these complicated things, sometimes people’s levels of serotonin can be lower or sub optimal. And so, something like an SSRI, which is like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, or Celexa, can go into that and raise that serotonin levels. 

Now, we talked about the four buckets, so I don’t want to say that’s the only answer because it’s not. Yeah. It’s not the only answer, but it can be one of the parts of a complicated situation. But for some people, raising that level can help with their depression, their sadness. I hear dopamine thrown around a lot. 

What’s dopamine? So, dopamine is the reward neurotransmitter. So, when we do good things, there’s enjoyment to it. God has put into us this dopamine that says, these are gifts from me, and I want you to continue them. Now, obviously it is a positive reward. It’s a positive reward. If you have dopamine neurotransmitting, that’s a pleasure feeling. It’s going to be something you connect with, remember, and want to repeat. Yes. Christmas is dopamine. I mean kids opening presents, you know, the excitement. The problem with dopamine is sometimes it can be hijacked. It can be taken over and that’s where we have a lot of addictions. 

Where someone turns to something, name the drug, and it feels good. And so instead of turning to what God has said is good and healthy, we turn to these other things to fill that need, and then it just takes over, and that’s where you see people who, when they’re stressed, turn to the drug, when they’re sad, they turn to the drug, when they feel anxious, they turn to the drug, instead of turning to God. 

All the things that God has put in to say these are good, and so that dopamine pathway basically gets hijacked, and people will turn to whatever drug that is, and we see a lot of addictive behaviors in that manner. There are some people that, whenever they’re stressed, whenever they turn to gambling, that excitement of, I might win the big one, it stirs that dopamine pathway. 

That’s right. And then gives you a high in a sense. Yes. It gives you a high in the sense that you want to match or repeat. Do we find then that if left to this end of dopamine that we can create a lifestyle that is jacked up on dopamine, for example, and then the life that God has called us to doesn’t match the excitement, therefore we don’t pursue it? 

Yeah, I think when we look at dopamine levels, there are definitely surges of dopamine. And so, I think if you turn to a life that is not centered on Christ or biblical principles, you are chasing the next high. So, you have these high spikes that at the top of the spike feel great, but you’re always trying to catch that next high spike. But if you would actually look at the area under the curve, the area of the dopamine overall, I think if you have that lifestyle and chasing spikes you might have specific small periods of time where that spike is high, but having a Christian life which is joy and peace and all the fruit of the Spirit I think you’re going to find the area under the curve is much greater because you just have this constant peace, and this constant happiness and joy. You’re going to have ebb and flows, ups and downs like everyone else, but I think that calmness is a reward of God saying, if you live a biblical life, you’re going to have joy, and you’re going to have peace and these sorts of things, and it’s not going to be this pursuit for the next high. 

Yeah. The pursuit over the next high. If I could just get this again, I’ll feel better. Isn’t there an element of dopamine that is anticipatory? Absolutely. So, it’s not necessarily the achievement but it’s the hope of, or the chasing of that. Does that make sense? Is that true? 

That makes total sense. Think about vacation. I mean, we look forward to vacation and we have that excitement and that’s a good thing because we are going to get together. We’re all going to have time on the beach or whatever it is. So that anticipatory thing of God’s goods gifts is a dopamine driven pathway that I think, pushes us in that direction. 

If we didn’t have that anticipation, if we didn’t have that drive, we probably wouldn’t do it. One of the ahas, Aaron, as you talk about it is I come to realize that my brain is a drug manufacturer. It is. Which helps me understand drug addiction better. Right? Correct, yes. Because you’re basically stimulating what your brain already naturally does, but you’re infusing it with what you want, right? 

Correct. And God has created our brain to be tremendous here. So, when we look at the medication piece, what you’re doing is you’re helping those chemical levels to be at the right place, to play at the right time, to be at the right levels. Is that a good way to understand it? We’re not actually really giving anything. 

We’re more like changing the way our body produces or doesn’t produce different things. Okay. Aaron, this has been very intriguing. Truly, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And I think all of our brains are a bit full at the moment, so let’s take a break here. But when we return in the next episode, the Scriptures say a great deal about our thought life. 

And I want to hear you speak about the topic of the sanctification of our minds. I think our listeners will be blessed by what they learn. 

I introduced my guest on the last episode. He is Dr. Aaron Platner, and I’m delighted to have him along again today. Aaron is a psychiatrist who attends a practice in Michigan but serves our clientele here at ACCFS for a few hours every week. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So, the Scriptures say a great deal about meditation, a great deal about thoughts. 

I mean, think of Philippians. Think on these things, right? Correct. A whole list of things to think about. We have David throughout the Psalms, and I think we see David actually through the Psalms meditating on God, right? So, what does spiritual growth look like in this space of brain and science? Great question. 

Great question. I think the more you look into things through a lens of the Bible, the more God is glorified. On the one hand, the brain does change. You talk about your kids. Our brains physically change, and as our brain physically changes, that changes the way we respond. So, for some people, similarly like a pathway. 

If I walk the same pathway through woods every single day that path is going to be ingrained. Yes, it’s going to be an easy path to go through. So, I come to the woods I see this distinct path or maybe there’s not even grass growing anymore because I’ve walked it so much. It’s a clear path. To go a different path is going to be more resistant, more difficult and our brain can get into these patterns. Once again, healthy patterns or not healthy patterns. 

And the more we develop healthy patterns, the easier it is to do biblical healthy things, such as being slow to speak, but quick to listen. I remember growing up, my dad used to tell me, you got to stop interrupting people, let people finish it. And that’s just been a practice of being conscious of others and learning and it’s easier for me to let people speak than it was when I was younger. 

So, the example you’re giving is you had a pathway in the way that your brain was going of interrupting people. Yeah. And that was a path of least resistance. That was just the way you were going to behave because of the firing of your brain with the neurotransmitters and all those things. But over time through your dad’s coaching, you started taking another path. 

And that pathway changed. And see, you haven’t even interrupted me yet. I’m definitely learning. So yes, and I think that’s where we do need a community of Christian brothers and sisters who can show us those blind spots, that point out those things, so those friendships we have are healthy. And as you talk about meditating in the Bible so that we see these behaviors that we do, and then we reflect that into the Word of God, and it speaks to us to say, this is what I want. 

So, you know, Paul says, be anxious for nothing. That’s a very, very convicting verse, even for those who maybe suffer with anxiety or those who look at this world and all the changes that are made, and yet we’re exhorted to be anxious for nothing. And I think we know people who are always anxious about this and that and what’s going on here and there. 

I think sometimes people feed this wrong pathway about always being anxious about what the next thing is or isn’t. And you just need to stop them and say, it’s okay. And maybe this is not a healthy pathway. And they begin to program us. So, a couple of things that we’re saying here is that our brain, and I know that some writers call it plasticity, can change. The downside of that is it can be changed for the worse through these pathways, as you’ve mentioned. But I want to put my finger on the great deal of hope which you’ve also said is they can be changed for the better.  

Absolutely. So, even though that person says, well, I’m just a worrier. That’s the way I am. Well yes, that might be true, but it’s not like that has to always be true. That’s very true. I think that our temperament, we do have different temperaments, doesn’t excuse us because that temperament more activates us to be aware of what our weaknesses are. And that we have some natural pathways and connections our brain takes, but we don’t have to take those pathways and over time, those pathways can be rerouted.  

And that reroute, help us with that. What does that reroute start with? Is it a thought exercise? Is it something that we have? I think about a couple of things, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. And they’re all interconnected. You can check if I’m wrong here, but it seems like my behavior follows my emotions. It does. My anger flares up, I’m probably going to act a certain way. And so, how do these bundle together, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

Yes. So, there’s a whole study of cognitive behavioral therapy that just does what you talked about, that all of us have automatic thoughts. We cannot stop that. So, if I say Donald Trump People are going to have automatic thoughts. Now, those automatic thoughts can be very different across the spectrum, but just saying his name really will make people have different thoughts. Based on the thought you have about our president, is going to make you have an emotion. It could be a strong emotion; it could be maybe not that strong of an emotion. And what that emotion is, once again, can vary. And then based on that emotion, you’re going to have a specific behavior. And then these things just feed into each other all of the time. 

So once again, you can have a good cycle, or you can have a bad cycle. And that’s where, hopefully, the truths of Scripture can enter into these different thoughts, emotions, behaviors, to correct things. I try to do something at work, and it fails miserably. And my automatic thoughts might be, you know, You’re a loser. What’s wrong with you? You shouldn’t have tried it or whatever. You’re no good. And so if I have that and then that makes me feel sad I may not be likely to try to walk out in faith or be a good employee. But if I look at a Scripture that says no, I’m loved by a king. I am someone who is treasured. That can really be a solid foundation or bedrock for a Christian moving forward. 

If we add up all of our conversations, those things that people speak into us in a day’s time, it hardly measures the talk that we’ve told ourselves in a day’s time. Right? I mean, the conversation that we’re having here, we’re having a conversation, right? That will all add up on my day-to-day conversation. Maybe I’ll read some literature, maybe I’ll engage other people, but it will be dwarfed in size of the thoughts that I’m thinking. Towards yourself. Towards myself. And being cognitive of those thoughts is important. That’s what you’re saying.  

And I know that Paul says about bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, that we take these thoughts, and we capture them. We don’t let them run amok. We look at them and we analyze them and say, is this of God or not? And based on how we do that, we’re going to be able to let that thought take its proper place. We are instructed to read the Bible every day, to pray every day. There’s this constant pattern to it. 

And that’s a healthy thing because we forget. And so be reminding ourselves to be overwhelmed or to be saturated by gospel truths can change the way we think about ourselves, think about those thoughts, and then move on to behavior. It’s going to play out into our emotions and our behavior. You know, I’ve heard it illustrated and it’s so true. Try to change the way you feel. You can’t do it. You cannot do it. Change the way you think. And you can. Yes. Absolutely. I think that’s a fascinating and a very powerful point to make, that even though we want our feelings to change, I want to not be angry, or I don’t want to want something, right? You know how that is. 

But I can’t just like a switch, switch it. But I can think right now that God loves me. I can think I’m a son of his. I can think that I’m righteous because of Christ. Those things I can think, but they need to be infused with truth, and that would be the Scriptures. Absolutely. Sometimes we forget about really the power of hymns or singing. You know, by singing these songs, you’re able to remember these song lyrics. And so, while we’re singing these songs, we’re really obviously singing to the Lord, but also, it’s an easy way for us to remember the different hymns. I think if I ask someone, do you know Amazing Grace? 

I think we can all just rattle off songs we’ve sung for years. And I think we forget, by singing those songs, putting them to music, we are putting these powerful lyrics into our soul, into our beings, that really can play themselves as well. So obviously Scripture is very important, but let’s not forget about some really powerful hymns or songs that are created for a reason. 

God wants us to remember those biblical truths and allows an easy way for us to have them and access them. Yeah. You know what speaks to me when you say that? You’ve really caged worship in a beautiful sense that, yes, while worship is God directed and primarily for God’s glory, but also for our benefit. 

Yes. Worship is for our benefit. And that then now raises the need to worship. I need to worship God for my own well-being. You look at Romans 1, which talks about when they didn’t glorify God as God, right? Then all of a sudden, the atrocities follow, and isn’t it just because we’re not worshiping God, our thoughts are not on him? 

And those thoughts not being on him have a trickle-down effect. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. But what does it mean to love the Lord with all of our mind? Paul talks about girding up our minds, our thoughts. We’re not even scratching the surface of the amazement that the mind has and that we need to use this tool for his worship. 

Aaron, so then is there a framework that you use as you think about some believers not wanting to be medicated? Yes. I’m afraid maybe that medication will be the rest of my life. And does that mean I’m really genuine towards God if I behave this way or think this way just because of medication? 

So, we resist that. And that’s very plausible, right? Yes. On those reasons. So. Would you talk to that? Sure. There’s a mistrust among the Christian community of psychiatry. I think some of the history has not always been Christian friendly. Our father would be Sigmund Freud, who was not a friend to Christian believers with some of his theories, so I understand the background. 

Where I come from is that when people come to me, I need to first of all understand what your goals are. What do you want to accomplish? What are we working on together? I think there are some people that just say give me  medicine and make it all go away And I think that that’s just too simplistic and we’re putting our hope in the medication not in what God’s order is or what he’s given us. 

And so that’s an unhealthy side. If I can just have the right medicine, everything will be fine. It’s just not that easy. But the other side I see is that some people are saying, I don’t want any medicine at all. Medicine has no place in my life. And I respect that. I’m not looking to force medicine on anyone. 

When I look at a patient who comes to me, I need to know, number one, what are their goals, like we mentioned, and then number two, where are they with the different buckets that I have? Are they coming to me realizing I have a problem with this? Can we address that? And if it’s a sin issue, then absolutely. 

You probably know as well as I know, people have to understand their need or what the problem is before we can even move forward on that. So, for some people, depending on how they come to me is how I can approach them or take them. There have been some people I’ve told, I don’t really think medicine is going to be helpful for you. I really think you need to address this area of your life that’s having a negative impact. Some people wouldn’t receive that well. And so, I have to be careful about how I present that to them. Other people say, you know, you’re right, and I just needed to have that reassurance. We needed to close this door of options. 

Exactly. I come down to the purpose of us living is to glorify the Lord. And if someone is so stunted or debilitated, what’s the word I’m looking for? They’re so crippled by a different psychiatric illness, and I can provide them with medication to help them work through that so that they’re better able to glorify the Lord, then I’m for it. 

You know, the question that people have is, how long do I need to be on this medicine? It just depends. Some people, we’ve had them on a medicine for a short time period, and they’ve worked through the issue, they’ve gotten through it, gotten good counseling, we pull them off, and they do well. For some people with more of like chronic mental illness such as schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, they need to be on medicines for a longer time period to make sure that their brain is functioning at an appropriate level. 

We’ve tried to get off the medicines and those psychotic symptoms come back, so we really keep them on them. So, to answer your question, we want to meet people where they are, figure out what their goals are. If medications can help them achieve that goal to the glory of God, then we’re for it. And we want to be on the least amount of medicine for the least amount of time. 

They need to be assured that God is faithful. He will be there. But it does take time and effort and work. And it is, you know, the tortoise always wins. It is the slow and steady, faithful processing of long obedience in the same direction. Is the medication addictive? If somebody were saying, well, Dr. Plattner, is this going to be a medication I’m going to become addicted to? Is that the case on a lot of it? You know, you do need to have an understanding of the biological aspects of medication. There are certain medicines that can be addictive. They can be taken in excess levels and cause problems. That would be something like benzodiazepines, Ativan, Xanax, or Valium. 

Now, there might be people out there on these medicines, and I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be taking those medicines, but they do have potential that if someone does not have anxiety and they’re taking those medications, they’re going to have a potential to be addicted. If someone does have anxiety and they are treating that anxiety with the medicines, the rate of addiction plummets significantly. 

Same thing if someone has physical pain and they’re on an opiate pain medicine, their addiction rate is less than for those who don’t have pain but are on pain medication. So, once again, you have to be careful about treating pain, both physically or psychiatric pain. So, most of the psychiatric medicines are not addictive. 

Now, if someone’s on medicine and they stop taking it abruptly, they can have some side effects to it. But that does not mean they’re addicted to that medicine. They just came off the medicine inappropriately. Similarly, if you’re drinking six Pepsi cans a day, and then you just stop, you’re not going to feel well. 

That’s not saying that Pepsi is necessarily addicting, but your body’s acclimated to that, and then just stopping it can be somewhat discomforting. So, there are medications that can have an addiction property, but most of the medicines that we’re giving people, such as SSRIs or antidepressants, are not addicting. 

Aaron, as you look to the future, are you optimistic about how Christians intersect psychiatry in terms of the professional world that you’re in? Are you optimistic that in science we’re learning a great deal more that’s even glorifying God more in this space? Overall. Yes, I’m excited because I know who writes the book. 

I think from a purely psychiatric perspective, there are a lot of discoveries being made. There’s a lot of really interesting research being done And so I’m excited to look at that and say how are we going to have more information that’s going to enable me to have more tools to help more people. I think secondhand from a Christian perspective in psychiatry I see a resurgence of Christians really wanting to know things as far as loving the Lord with their mind. I think I’m seeing more clients that really are able to talk in Christian biblical terms. That’s very encouraging, and I’m seeing some people really work together. As things shift in the outside world, I think I’m seeing the Christian world drawing closer together, and that’s exciting. 

And I think the fact that we’re even here at ACCFS, I mean, this is a new thing. I think that the Apostolic Christian Church is making some really healthy changes that are meeting some really specific needs. And so, I’m excited to see what the Lord is going to do with that. I don’t know what the specifics look like, but I do think we’re going to see some God glorifying events happen. 

What is it that makes you roll back in your chair and say, oh, I love this? I think for me I’ve always been drawn towards psychosis. I mean, that’s how I ended up getting into psychiatry. So, at my work, most of the time, it is nice to have a family meeting where someone says, you know, my son or daughter is back. 

And that is very fulfilling. I think we see that there was God’s creation. There was sin that distorted it. And then he invited us to come alongside him to bring order into people’s lives. So, if through God, we can have therapy or medication that can bring order into people’s lives that is satisfying. 

And I would have to think, Aaron, just the fact that you are helping to enable that primary organ to worship God in terms of our thoughts, emotions, and mind. Such a primary organ to set free to worship God and to see that done in people and allow it to function in that way has got to be incredibly rewarding. 

It is rewarding. People should realize it’s very difficult to look into our own selves and to discover those pathways, discover those faulty lines of thinking, and then to work through those. Once again, God’s grace is deep and he will meet people there and work through there, but I do want to let people know that this can be very difficult. 

Similarly, when we talk about people who want to lose weight, it is difficult to get up and exercise. I mean, these things we can all identify as very tough. And that seems so much more tangible. Yeah. But for people who suffer with mental illness, it’s not as tangible as saying no to that Krispy Kreme donut. 

Yeah. But they need to have the credit. They need to understand that they need to be applauded for working through these issues because working through the issues means you have to turn inside and see that center of life and then give it to the Lord. Yeah. Amazing. Or just to have faith that we don’t know. We don’t have a specific explanation to why people are having this. If someone’s in a car accident, they can say, my leg is broken because I was hit in a car accident, and that’s what’s causing this pain. Sometimes with mental illness, we don’t know what the car accident was. We don’t know why you’re feeling this pain. 

I wish I had a clear, crisp example or explanation. But the area is not that black and white. It’s very gray. And I think just the fact that people have to wrestle through that can be very painful in and of itself. Yeah. Thanks for giving us Psychiatry 101. Oh, no problem. In bringing this discipline here. 

Obviously, that’s a large part of the work we do here at ACCFS. But I just want to put my finger on a couple of things that you said that I think are tremendous. It goes back to John 9. Did this man sin or his parents? Yeah. Why is this man the way he is? And Christ’s answer was to the glorification of God. 

And really what we’ve heard here is that it is to the glorification of God that we work with people and as we help them and restore them and help their mind be in a place where it can, again, glorify God or be rightly attuned. And as you talk through the brokenness and the redemption, I see the gospel through your work here. 

And we all see the gospel in all of our places of work, really. We see it at many different levels. Yes, for the salvation of souls, the gospel, that’s primary, but we see the gospel in so many other places and certainly we see it here in the work of psychiatry. So, thanks for your work. Thanks for having me. 

Thanks for your time out of your busy schedule to have this conversation, appreciate it. And to our listeners, we hope that this has provided some touch points, some understanding, some wherewithal as we talk about mental health here at ACCFS. Thank you.