Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Free Your Mind, Let's Talk About It with LKJ. Today it is an absolute honor and privilege, um, to bring this gentleman to the listeners of our show at womensradiostation.com. Um, Dr. Arthur Cassidy, chartered psychologist TV psychologist and broadcaster. Arthur is a well-established social media and celebrity psychologist. He is also a voice coach and ex-choirster with a drama and music background who has made a dynamic and energetic impact to contemporary television programs. And that has nothing to do, ladies and gentlemen, with his wonderful shirts that he wears, which always fascinate me. However, um, his impact has, you know, contemporary television programs such as Big Brother, Big Brain, I'm a Celebrity, This Morning, Chrissy Bee Show, and others by bringing a fresh insight into evidence-based psychology aspects of a wide range of topics on human behavior seen in today's terrestrial channels. He currently eliminates TV and radio programs on the psychological aspects of social media and its effects on teenagers. His psychological expertise and warm personality is a constantly sought after by television executives, researchers, and producers for high-profile reality shows and serious documentaries. I'm going to stop on that bit because I need to bring Dr. Arthur in. Dr. Arthur, you know, I don't want you sitting in the background there for too long because, you know, we need your energy into this show because the listeners would like to hear, and I do believe in connecting tone of our voices with our listeners, so we start that engagement. So welcome to my show, Dr. Arthur. Welcome, Lady Kendall. Uh, great pleasure, um, to be with all of you. Um, coming back from Ireland, Northern Ireland. Uh, forgive me because I was at an emergency earlier on and just got back in. So can you hear me, by the way? Yes, I can hear you. Yes, if it comes in and out, you know, our listeners are very forgiving because, you know, what we learn in life is, you know, life isn't a rehearsal. We go live, we go live, you can't rewind, we go live. So with things that happen, we, you know, we go that, then we assess back, don't we? So, um, Arthur, introduce yourself. I know I've given, um, the listeners a little bit of the background that's on your bio, and we can break down and talk about different things. But in your own words, in your own life journey, can you tell us who you are, where you came from, you know, your setup, your bioscience human being that's made up of not only just consistency of human cells, organs, and a matter of science. You are somebody that analyzes the emotions, the brain, people's behavior, etc. So who are you, Dr. Arthur? Where did you come from and what brought you onto this journey? Because I'm sure our listeners are very keen to hear you. I'm just getting— I have a slight technical problem there, so I'm just getting— so I can hear you clearly. I think this is much better. Yes, I think this is better. Hello? Hello? I've got you. Oh, that's much better. Yes. Hello, can you hear me now? We can hear you loud and clear. Oh, brilliant, that's super. Yes, well, I am an ex-academic clinician and I have been working on television broadcasting for around 20 years, and I really came into this accidentally because I always had an interest in the human brain, but also I came up with a music and drama background, so So I have quite a haphazard background, and having worked my script into university, I suppose, wasn't my dream at all. My dream was to perform on stage, but I had something to perform about, and at that time I had nothing to perform about really. So I scripted university and got an interest in political science initially, strangely enough, and music, but I knew I couldn't really make a musical career, so all I could do was sing, and I had to learn learn how to be a chorister because it's the only way you could actually make it to university in Ireland. And Gloria Honeyford from Loose Women, she and I sang in the same choir, by the way, right? So we were there and for some time, and that's the place you had your musical training to see could you become a member of the Royal School of Church Music. And so this is where you really had to excel in singing or you just didn't make it. And so I expect, you know, that was possibly the trigger for my zooming into sort of performing arts in a way. And at university I began then to take up clarinet and saxophone, which I also play. So that was my passion. So, but when I was there, I was always curious about the human brain, and I don't know how this happened. I mean, it was— I was intrigued by people watching, and I always was very mindful of the fact that women were seen as a different species from men. It was very extraordinary. And I wondered why this should be, that women should be treated so differently to men. And I thought there's something very wrong about this, ethically and morally. And so I then tested a very deep interest in the study of the female brain and the— and how female behavior would stem from that. And I recognized that basically that the human female brain is wired very differently from the male brain. And emotionally as well. And therefore I began to take a lot of research academically and clinically with regards to the identity of women and femininity, but mostly in women, and also their place in society and how women could at that time, you know, when I was an undergraduate, how women could actually begin to manifest themselves in a more powerful way. And I was always curious why men for holding the force in, in industry as entrepreneurs. It was male bosses everywhere you would go. It would be the male, male dominance thing. And I couldn't really understand why this had to be, and I knew there was something wrong. And for, to, for society to work globally, there has to be some degree of respect for each other. And it's much more than respect, it was the effect of tolerance and understanding and mutual enrichment. And I knew this was, this was absent, so I got together with a social psychologist and we began to explore ways of trying to understand how do we explore the male and females, but more the female brain and female behaviour, and why these women were hurting and breaking in different countries, and from Australia to New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, to South America, to the Amazon, North America. And so I was fascinated, Kendall, by this, and why it is that that we have these inequalities in health and in the distribution of health. And so that was basically the trigger that caused me to be a researcher into women's behaviour, emotions especially, more so than ever again through reality television, I suppose. But that was the beginning. Right. Okay. So for yourself, the fascination, obviously going back Dr. Armstrong, when you're there and doing the singing, obviously the wonderful Gloria Hunniford is singing through there in Ireland and bringing us back from this young Irish gentleman, quite energetic, loving life, enjoying the choir, The Sound of Music, etc., come through. That when you are stood in front of that audience, that you actually are doing a reverse role where the audience are looking at you. You actually reverse that role by engaging with the audience to think, you know, why are you clapping more to the gentleman probably than to the lady, you know, as you were saying. And, you know, women are treated differently, we think differently. I mean, we have that book, you know, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. What is your uptake on that book, may I ask, if you have any view? Yeah, and, and, um, I, I grew up with a very nuclear family, I suppose, with my sisters and my parents as well. And in this, in Ireland, maybe in contrast to England, you know, um, nuclear family was very much structured and it was very much based around the female. And the mother did everything. She was quite competent. And, and it was the competence that triggered off something in my brain, you know, that there was something here about women. They were multitasking. They were multi-skilled. And whilst the men were going out and doing all the work, the women seemed to be working harder than the men. And so I knew that there was something extraordinary about this. That how could they have the physique and the tenacity, how they could have that mothering, nurturing function. And besides that, this incredible type of intelligence women had appealed to me in a very extraordinary way. So, in a way that men didn't. So men didn't fascinate me as much as women. And it was the fact that they could multitask. But that was not being rewarded or recognized, except that it ought to have been. So that basically set my heart on fire, I suppose, with a passion for trying to understand the role of women in society and how they should be given the respect that should be given, you know, not just in our world, but in other countries as well, nationalities. So that was really the driving force behind my own research enterprise. Yeah, because, you know, when we look at the actual brain Men's brains are actually bigger than the female's brain. So you would think, you know, like, man's strong masculine muscles, you know, can lift that load more, you know, than the female that's going on there. Being a woman's hippocampus is actually critical to our learning and memorization, where, you know, the man's is working very differently. I mean, we have these things that, you know, that women are less intelligent than men, men are stronger than that. I mean, I'm a great believer in education, Arthur, you know, and how we teach our brain with a sponge. So I am a little bit, you know, I'm not a feminist, as you know. I look at the biosystems, I look at how we're made up. The upshift of the mind. I, you know, as the ambassador for the Slow Institute, Dr. Erich Fromm himself, you know, absolute genius, just constantly looking, you know, at the cosmos, etc., and how we looked at that and the intelligence. And we will always study the brain and the difference, you know. And there is so much that people don't actually realize, you know, how things can affect our brain. And you're saying with the females, that now when we look, it's not a rising, I believe, of feminicity. I just believe that we are in a different era than what we were many years ago, in which diversity and equality, disability, deafness awareness, etc., is— mental health is more recognized, there's much more awareness of this. And I also feel, you know, we have looked back, you know, when we look at TV news reporters where the males generally got paid these huge amounts of, uh, money and the females weren't, which is bringing in the balance. And everybody should be treated equally on the same level of balance because in our whole life Whatever we do, it's about balance, isn't it? Absolutely, yes. And, and we have lost this balance, um, in many, many ways. I mean, for example, a lot of my work and the work of others, you know, uh, working in my field, um, have been exploring the range of competencies that women have. It's called the multi-dimensional self-concept. So We all have not just one unilateral, you know, this is me, this is the self, the authentic self. The, the balance has got to be between all the different areas of competences that the female has and the, the different competences that the male has. But there has to be a balance not only between the sexes but also within the sexes, so that, that women's balancing of her competence areas is very different for the balancing of the, the male competences. These are called self— parts of the self, parts of self-concept. So for example, um, some of the work that I, I did was back in the University of Denver with Dr. Susan Harter, who began to pioneer really, you know, the whole nature of the female self, how women should be enriching and empowering each of these various dimensions of the self. And this absolutely fascinated me to no end, Kendall. And so I've I began to look at the athletic self in women. I began to look at the social self, the social acceptance, how women socially accept themselves and others. We began to look at the moral and behavior aspect and dimension of the self, how women make moral decisions in their lives, how they become skilled at that. Began to look at their dimension of self-worth, global self-worth, global self-esteem. And those are many of the core parts of the self-concept that build up what we now think and know as the empowerment enrichment of women. So we are demonstrating, we are switching on all these different aspects of our self-concept in our interaction with other women and with other men as well. But also the entrepreneurial self is the part of that development. And so when we become entrepreneurs, when we have that goal, when we have that empowerment enrichment to say, I know where I'm going in life, I want to be this, I've got a dream, I'm going to live my dream. And I'm a human. At the end of the day, we are people. And I think academics have forgotten that as well as clinicians. We are people. And what we have to do is to remove all the labels and look at who we are. Every woman is unique. Every person is unique. But every person has that, has that entitlement to be loved, to be respected, to be empowered, And that is an entitlement. It's a moral entitlement that I feel women should, should be more recognizant of and feel we have that ability to, to be empowered, to be entitled to that. And it is an entitlement. And so it's a matter of being able to realize that we're not just Mary or John or Barbara or whatever we are, Kendall. You are a whole multitude of competences and all of a variety of high-level skills. And those are the ones that we focus— and we focus into achieving our aims and achieving our goals. And that builds into our self-efficacy as women, builds into the empowerment. And that comes by self-actualization. It becomes by driving the, the self forward in life, being able to, to manipulate the various aspects in life, in, on the global infrastructure, to attain our goal, to make sure we get by the stepping stones. By the way, It's not one huge jump, and it's who we meet, who we network with, that helps us to achieve that goal. As we're talking, you're bringing in networking into that, which is a very big thing. I do— a lot of people, I would have said 10 years ago, would have thought the only people that networked were males, when actually the females, I believe, were networking all the way from the small nursery schools to coming out like you were saying about your mother, we're doing a lot of the work and networking through that we are all equal, we all are enabled to stand and to be ourselves and how we come across. But what I find, I don't know if you're finding in the upshift of the different, you know, as we're going on, you know, 30 years ago when I was at school, you know, we were just happy, you know, watching the Grease movie um, yeah, sure, and playing around with stuff. But now I find when I look around here, young girls, you know, why are we dressing young girls at the age of 5 as if they're 20? Is it because the TV, you know, the female brand, the children say, 'I've got to have it.' The TV is sending this craze through, and the mothers are doing it. And you can really tell, I truly believe, in the way that the girls are growing up, what they're going to do and where they become with that. There's nothing wrong with fashion, but I believe this: why can't little girls be little girls anymore? I may be old-fashioned, but I believe in the natural process of the human brain, the human being growing equally, playing, having the fun to come through. This pressure that I see on these reality shows. I have to— it's my— this is an unjudgmental and unbiased show, but I don't like them. And I'm sorry if that offends people, because I think it brings even more mental health trauma on people. It's bad enough going to school, and I truly believe in the school uniform. Some people say, "Oh, it's yuck," because you're not deterring from it. You're not making somebody stand out more. The uniform there unifies as equals. Absolutely, totally, totally. Because I think the pressure, you know, on a family, you know, it's enough to, you know, feed that family, then coming in, and it's hard, it's hard, Arthur, because, you know, when you see and you read these stories about bullying where all this education is going for teachers, for parenting, online stuff for the children to see as they're subjected to the ever-growing social media site when there are laws that say this child should not be on here because they're— but some parents allow them to do it. And then growing up, the amount of time that they spend on these computers and machines and iPhones, they're glued, the iPhone watch, everything. They are absolutely wonderful if used in their correct purpose. If you're using— even now, I don't know if you've noticed, you go into, say, a Costa Coffee— there's no sponsorship to Costa Coffee for mentioning it, it's just an abbreviation, you know, they do coffee— but I'm saying, the amount of children From the age of 6, 7 months old, Arthur, up to— I'm throwing with this iPhone, whatever, in front of them. So the lights and that are going on to do it, so they're quiet, so the women go on and chatting, or the man that comes again. No, stop. The human brain, the first 6 months of that child's life, they are vulnerable. They need the breast of the mother, they need the learning, they're learning the sounds as they're growing through to that first year. So the sounds are different than putting and feeding electrical stuff through to their eyes. Yes, there are educational stuff that can come on for tiny baby, but short rhythms from, you know, when we use the music and light, but using it in its right context. But then from 1 year old to 2, you know, as they're going through now, started, but it takes until the child is 3 years old just for the brain to be fully formed. In the years from 2 to 3, they are learning their sensory skills. From 3 to 7, they're taking on their character, they're building into that. And then up to 11, and then we, you know, it's bad enough, you know, coming through as they're teaching, and they're looking to their parents. They are the teachers. They are teaching them how to walk, how to talk, how to express, how to control their emotions before they become into a whirlwind at the age of anywhere from age 11 onwards. You know, when generally females are, you know, can be put into a change in their reproduction system, which is really quite traumatic if it's that young, or some of it late 13, and then they don't know, they tend to step away from the parents teaching to looking at their peers, you know, and you know, they think it's so unfair, you know, the rules go, because they're trying to learn. And my grandma said, don't try and grow old too quick, trust me. But I say, Granny, please, can I stay at yours tonight? Because I can go out, my friends go. So you're not going out. But Granny said, your mother said you're not going out. And because you've come to stay with me, you're not going out. I used to cry, Arthur, but going out somewhere. They said, no, there are dangers out there, you know, and there are dangers, and we must look at them because we read about these dangers, we read about the dangers of what's going on with these phones. And there's something that you've been really studying on is about the teenage stuff as well and how they look at these shows. I mean, well, I must admit I do like, um, and I'm always correct for it, and I always call it Google Box, but it's Goggle Box, isn't it? Goggle Box, yeah. Let's get it back to front. So, and I know that the male brain normally goes back to front, so have I got more male testosterone in me or not? I'm not quite sure on that. I mean, yeah, so go ahead. Yes, no, no, um, over to you. I would like to hear your views on that, you know. If you have a child now, what is your view? Do you feel, you know, after the pandemic, after everything we've been locked down, shut in— which I feel there was a— there did come some good from the pandemic in the fact that we learnt We had to be within our family unit. We had to talk to each other. We had to converse. We had to collaborate. You know, when you had the dinner, there was nothing else to do. You couldn't go out. And then you missed Granny, you missed that friend more. But how soon when you go out, when you're there, lockdown basic for 2 years, you know, 2 years, and it hasn't gone away. You know, all those lives that were lost. And a lot of mental pressure for people that was isolated. We'll get on to that. But Dr. Arthur, you know, when you're looking at it, I do believe some gain came from that to show that impact to people, remember. But how quickly does that ship sail? Because we seem to be forgetting everything that I believe is the universe. The universe gives gives you something, okay, to create and work with. And you know, what you throw out, that universe will throw back at you, you know. And I'm a strong believer of that. And I do believe there's nothing more rewarding than sitting and eating, whether it's friends, family, uh, with your children, that you can collaborate around the table and ask how your day was, because we're going to lose that completely. I was asked by People's Friend to do an article on it, which, you know, my comments went in. But I feel very strongly— I'm not saying every night you have to sit there like we did, you know, when we were growing up, but we have to live in— the world is always ever-changing, always ever-revolving, and we have to shift with that, as well as our minds and our behaviours and different things. I mean, gosh, if you brought somebody and was to come back from, you know, if we did the time machine and brought some from the 1800s, they would think we were the aliens from outer space. We're going on, so it's full change. But my original question was, what is your view now on on the world itself, on children. When you— have you seen the same thing as I am, or am I being a little too judgmental or too old-fashioned? You're not. You mean, if I had took you out some night in London and people were just listening, you think you were my colleague in psychology because you've said everything what a psychologist would probably say. Well, there's great variance psychologists, but But if you— what you have said is actually supported quite a lot by scientific evidence. I mean, what's happening, actually, Kendall, now is that young girls are becoming very, very precocious. Okay. And that's simply because it's a logical development of women is far, far more advanced than other men emotionally. So you're finding now that 10-year-old girls will look like 17-year-old girls. 12-year-olds are looking and behaving like 18, 19-year-olds. I had a girl in my clinic the other day, she was 14. But she looked at Lizzie, 1920. Physique, stature, brain size, intelligence. Now, she was good to self-harm. Okay, so different story. But anyway, the point is that we do know that in terms of ethological differences, that's how we are developing over the years. The whole structure of the Western world and the Eastern world is causing and producing biological changes in the female brain, but also in the female body. So bodies and brains need to be in a synchrony, but they're changing at a very different rate than it would have been, say, 50 years ago. Right? And we know that from scientific research. What you have said is very important, and I'll tell you why. Developmentally, a child has got to go through the ages of, as we know, childhood, the prenatal stage, through the early childhood, and then from infancy into childhood. And we look for sequence of behaviors coming from, from vision and hearing, on motor skills, all of those things. And getting children out, like the Montessori sort of education system, where children go out and explore and they learn by discovery, all those lovely things. We're not fitting children, forcing them into a digital world which their brain is not ready for because the plasticity of the brain is still developing. And so we're actually robbing the brain of children are far too early. The children's brains at 4 and 5 years of age are being saturated with digitalia, and the whole nature of digital information, which is intended to enrich the brain of children, male and female, at the same time they're losing out on social facility skills where, in terms of affiliation, children interacting with each other. Rather, I was watching actually, by the way, a school as passing my dog one day and all the children except one had their heads buried in a tablet as they walked past the window with the doll. And there I saw them all with their heads buried in the tablet. The only person who was walking around was one student and teacher. When I came back, there were still heads buried in the tablet. Now, okay, I was in Kensington not long ago, right, in a Costa Coffee shop, right, and I went in at about 20 past 10, something like that, 7 people were sitting in their kindle, right? Heads buried in their tablets. A girl came in called Joan. She came in. She was part of the group, and they didn't look at her. There was no eye contact. She sat down beside the group. I was sitting in front of all this anyway, minding my business. But anyway, the next thing was, they knew she was there. She spoke 18 words in the space of an hour and a half. Right?. And then she got to leave and they said, bye, June, cheerio, see you soon. Right, okay. There was an hour and a half spent where there was no face-to-face connection, there's no eye gazing, there's no eye communication. So there was a great deficit there. So we're actually robbing children of social psychological skills of communication and self-efficacy by getting them into doing— there's nothing wrong with Zoom, there's nothing wrong with children doing that. But we have to get back to teaching children the psychomotor skills of playing with plasticine, playing with crayons, learning that so we have a synchrony developmentally of their competence skill ranges right through from infancy through childhood into early and late adolescence. So we're not pushing them into a saturated world of digital technology, which is— which means that parts of the brain that should be activated by social communication, you know, is able to do that and able to do it competently. I mean, I have health students working with me in my charity, by the way, as well as my television work, and I noticed that very often I've got to teach them how to write an email, um, and they're, they're very competent skills, but in people skills you can see deficits. And this is going back not just to first-year university students finally university students and even some, some postgraduates. There's a massive deficiency in people's skills, and I think we have to get this back. And reality television is destroying quite a lot of, of children's identification. So trying to be a woman in this world, uh, we need positive role models. And you and I know, Kendall, working as we do in media, We've got to look at the power of media in constructing, you know, the female form. What I should look like, I've got to be like that, I have to have that beauty. I deal with young people, as you know, Kendall, who've got maybe eating disorders, not that many, but I deal more with probably the body image. But we're looking here at the sensuality of young women. Um, what does that mean to them? How do I develop a sensuality? How do I develop that sexual attraction? How do I develop that Is that those natural instinctual skills should be through those forward and let others go backwards, you know? And I find that whenever I talk to young people in my clinic, I'm finding that very often they feel that the social conformity of being with the group and peers at school, wherever— pardon me— they have to be able to speak the same language. It's got to be that cool so that they can communicate effectively with their mates on the peer group. Now, if they can't do that If they try to individuate and stand out from the crowd by saying, "I'm going to do it my way, I'm just going to be me, I'm not going to be taken in by the glosses, I'm not going to be taken in by reality TV, I'm not going to be taken in with the latest YouTube videos that all my mates are watching, I'm just going to be me." If you do that, then you're opening yourself up to cyberbullying, and then the identity of that young woman becomes threatened because she's trying to make an ethical stance. And allowing her body and mind to develop sequentially. But if I compromise on my understanding of herself and if I go with the crowd, go with the flow, then it's going to end up, you know, with perhaps, you know, some form of mental incapacity where young people begin trying to rediscover who am I, am I worth anything? And many don't because the ones that I see month after month, you know, And year after year they'll say, "I'm not sure who I am because I'm expected to be that, I'm expected to be something different, I'm expected to be what my parents want me to be, I'm expected to be what my miss wanted me to be." And look at reality TV stars. I mean, it's imbued, our lives are imbued by reality television. You know, I worked in it, maybe you have too, you know. And, but we've got to ask big questions to television production. Are we really— and TV producers do know this, do know that there are massive arguments here against, you know, the reality television and its impact psychologically, how it can become— excuse me— how that can become toxic for the development of young women who are trying to find constructive positive role models in television. And so leaving aside all the other arguments about reality TV, it— we do know from scientific evidence that it does have a very detrimental effect on the development of self in young girls, and also just to a lesser extent on young guys. But young women especially, who want to grow in— into that sense of sensuality, into sex attraction, to know what it really means and how can they cope with this. And how can we do that? It's got to be— because it's called, it's called the social learning effect, by the way. And the social learning effect is where we internalize what we see on television because television legitimizes who we should be. So if it's on television, it's seen as gospel truth. That's the way we should be. And so therefore, I want to be like them. Yeah. And so that's basically the, the arguments that— and the problems that are facing many young people today. Yes, completely, because It's— and this isn't against, you know, TV in general. It, you know, we've grown, you know, when the TV first came on, you know, the good old Coronation Street, you know, Enid Sharples, etc. I'm really showing my age here with my grandparents and that on there. But the thing is, it is the basic facts. Well, the basic facts are, you know, for your child is the— I believe that there should be a TV program like yourself with psychologist. Myself, I've got chit-chat, as you've seen, uh, many different, um, certifications in child counseling, child behavior, you know, mental health, mental health law, etc., TV presenting, etc., like that, because I've used my brain to try and understand this ever-evolving world that we are in. My own granddaughter was taken from school because of, you know, issues that were in there and was actually told she would be raped and hung from a tree and bullied and videoed and put on this social media site. There should be an automatic ban. I'm not just saying it because it was my granddaughter. But I'm saying because there's many which brought self-harm issues in, that children now are having to have mental health counsellors at the age of when they're turning from 10, as early as 10, maybe before, but Jennifer Girls, 11 years of age, like you say, look like they're 16, trying to keep up with this because the people in there, the bullying, which has overcome from that and with help. And as you know, you cannot under law cancel your own family. As much as they say, well, you know, you know all this, and they look and say, how do they turn out like that? Because a child will always lie to cover up what's going on. And you know, you've got to be very careful when you're doing it. But I find then that with the reality TV, that why can we not have a reality show then? If they think, you know, there's pros and cons, why can we not have a reality show? You've done Big Brother, you've done Celebrity Get Back, you know, and it draws in the audience, it draws everybody in there. And put it— but like when we look at somebody that's slimming or dieting and how we put that on for diabetes, why is there not, or or has there not been? If the parents— and we're in a society that learns to have all this technology now— that we don't do a reality show to see how, you know, like when you go into the jungle. Well, we can't take these children and see if they can be changed, if this is different, if the mental health has to change or it's not. What's your feelings on that? Because I do feel we need to be firing back as mental health advocates, people like that, you know, when we're looking at this, where you can't see the girls got their phone up taking the selfie. No, that's not good enough, the selfie. It has to have a face up on it. They have to change the stuff, you know, for magazines. And that comes from magazines, you know, I've done work for magazines and they always change my face. Why can't my face just be my face? Why do you have to gloss it over? Because it plays with your mentality, you know, it starts hitting at you. Are you enough? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? And you can very easily be drawn into that. Yes, it's nice to look the best version of yourself, like when you're getting married, etc. But we have to— I do feel— rewind or just put the brakes on and say, okay, we're going to stand there and say, Okay, these girls love to do this. We're changing, we're moving with this, with, you know, with the age that they are and allowing them to be themselves. I really and truly feel that, you know, like when you have Big Brother, something like that, where they bring the children in so you can assess whether they're free, they're all going to come in, how they're going to be, and look at that, so that parents or people can outside for 3 weeks, say You know, who becomes king of the jungle as a child in their skills learning not to be, or have they learned to survive? Do you think that is something that would work, or do you think it will, you know, it's never going to happen? Well, um, knowing the way television works, as you'd probably do too, um, reality television, for all the arguments and— and I've argued vehemently with producers before that this is not on right. Number one, you've got a massive range of protocols which should be in place for the protection and welfare of participants in television shows, and those are set out by the British Psychological Society. And, and, but the problem is, and I've worked with producers, as you well know, in various shows, the main thing is here, this is about either making money getting ratings high, from advertising revenue. So you have one major ethical issue, an ethical debate about what is the point of this show. Is it as a social experiment, which I, I argue it's not. It seemed to be, but in fact it's not. And is it about ratings? Yes. I remember going to Big Brother way back in 2006, 2007, something like that, you know. And there we were in Oromwood and all the massive excitement going on, you know. And there I was, collared shirts and all, anyway. But there we were, and Davina was there, and scaffold was up, and all this massive people coming in. Now I began to wonder, look, is this really a social experiment? Um, number one, it's not. This is anything but a social experiment because It is, it is, it is actually— psychologists were not really involved in the actual design of that show. It was afterwards called The Big Brain Show that we got involved, and which was a, a brilliant show, but I don't think it was getting the ratings that the producers expected. They wanted excitement, they wanted sensuality, they wanted the sexual aspect of it, and they wanted all the aggression, wanted the high Machiavellian types. So here you had— I mean, remember when I was doing at that time, uh, you had Gia Goodie was here, the late Gia there, and you had the beautiful Shri Bhishetty that I met, I remember, and you had these beautiful people, and it demonstrated so much about aggression, about the effects of alcohol, and I remember saying to another psychologist, you know, what's this really all about? It seems to be about consumption of alcohol, about aggression, about people forced in the city to sleep together, cohabit together, all these things. That's what— hold on, wait, There's something wrong here. This is— what is the impact this is having on the developing brain of young people and older people as well? Because we do know from psychological research that in reality television, when you see— go back to even Big Brother, even Celebrity Big Brother— you have the capacity or the propensity for these shows, Kendall, for people in the living room who are watching this, you switch on. So what happens is we have 16 sets of motives. And we switch this on and off. Let's say I'm a guy, I've been out working all day as a JCB digger knocking down building sites. I come home and I get my pint of beer down in the shop, get my fish and chips, bring them home, talk to the wife and the children. Aye, aye, switch on the TV there, what was Big Brother? Now, if I have an aggressive instinct or aggressive trait in my body, I will switch on my aggressive personality trait. And I will be watching for aggression in the room, all right, Big Brother House. If I'm a different type of guy, or different kind of woman, and I'm more interested, I'm more placid, I'm more gentle, I'm much more, I will compromise, that type of person, they will switch on the affiliation trait, they will switch on the tactile trait, and so they'll be looking and zooming into Big Brother House, on the nice people, okay. And so these 16 personality traits that we used to talk about in the studio was what impact— and I remember asking this one of the producers, what impact would you think this is having on young people, teenagers? And my question was ignored. And they asked it over and over and over again because I can tell you the effect that this is having. And this will be one of the reasons why psychologists eventually, um, that, that were taken, but not exclusively out of the show. But that's the reason, one of the reasons why I think, you know, um, Big Brother psychologists actually were not wanted eventually in the shows, because I think we were raising too many issues about the morality and about the moral constraints that we've been shown. Because there is the choice of good and evil, but we have to remember that moral reasoning in young people is part of their self-concept, as part of their personality development. And if they are beginning to see television as a legitimate form of authority, then young people begin to feel, okay, if that's okay, if young brother has, this is the way I should be. And so that is internalized. So there is television commissioners also, and executives do have that prerogative to say, hold on, what's the impact going to be on young people's development? Male and female, of reality television. What is the ultimate purpose of this show? Is it to generate massive amount of mega bucks? Okay, or through advertising, through the content? And it is the content that was— is a problem here. And because we're allowing people, we're facilitating excessive alcohol consumption in a way that's anything— nothing to do with psychological experiment. And whilst we did comment about the scientific nature of aggression and conflict and how it was managed or how it wasn't managed, in mental health, you know, it was creating more mental health issues because all young people were seeing in the living room was aggression. They were seeing massive aggression, microaggression, they were seeing high levels of Machiavellianism where people were becoming highly narcissistic, becoming very dominant. Somewhere many people were in tears, you know, and so we were seeing huge amounts of conflict.. And we do know from some development research that that was actually producing and also reinforcing argument in people's households because they're beginning to normalize this. So people thought, well, the television producers are going to produce this type of reality show, uh, is this good for mental health? Well, what we can see here that this is certainly very bad for mental health because all we're seeing here are people arguing, conflict, arguments, and it goes from love, or what's purported to be love, at one side which was not really a very good example of love at all. So to the other side, we get aggression and dominance. Now, what effect does that have on a natural, a normal family, young people, husband, wife, or partners and children growing up anywhere in any English city, town, village? Okay. And you see these young people growing up saying, well, if that's what comes on television, is that the way we're meant to behave? And so it causes a lot of consternation with how they grapple with their self-concept and the development of this. And so this is the reason why we have ended up with other reality TV like Jeremy Kyle Show, and where all of that aggression, that interrogation and anger has become very detrimental and has led to, obviously, as we know, suicidal behaviours. And so we heard that. I dealt with several of these, and maybe going back to, to, um, many of the beauty queens we had from Love Island and so on. Again, there's another one we have starting soon again, and we have to look very much at what happened here. Where is the welfare after the shows? And it wasn't until very recently that ITV began to, to examine and say, okay, we're going to have to really examine more carefully how we deal with the participants before and after the show. It was never done properly, by the way. I can tell you that actually it was never properly done before. And they tried to palm people off as counseling. But what I heard from people who had been in the Love Island show— and they contacted me personally— they're saying, Arthur, what would we do? I said, okay, I'll tell you what to do. And what they told me was, actually, the only people who are getting the psychological support and attention for their mental health are those who are going to win. Ultimately the winner. Now what about the other participants? They go home, the show's finished, you're deflated, you're waiting for an agent or sub-agent to ring you. That call never comes. So you've got to grapple with returning back in the city street, back to your job. Uh, you've been in Love Island, you've got to be someone, you've got to be famous. Are you? The next thing is I get a call from somebody who's self-harming. I got a call from somebody who's maybe trying to get the counseling but doesn't work. And I had 8 or 9 or 10 of those, by the way, over several years. And that's what happens when— now the IKB is much more rigorous, of course, and they have now argued that every participant will have their mental health actually protected by counseling and psychotherapy and whatever. One girl who did say to me there was a psychiatrist, but she never heard from him after the show was over, and no one approached her. It was left for her to approach them, and that's wrong because the, the fact is that young people who go into the shows now, their mental health has not been given the high level of attention that it should have been given because they are not taught how to deal with with press, how to cope with press, how to cope with exposure, with massive exposure in the red tops, tabloids, and broadsheets. How do we cope with the fact if I'm not selected, if I don't have an agent, if I'm not rung up, if no one rings me up, where will I be? How do I tell my friends? Is there something wrong with me? So they feel a sense of direct threat to their identification, so to their personal identity. And that means then they end up manifesting things like health anxiety disorders, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and then that goes into chronic depression. So, so we end up with maybe long-term depression. They're out of work because they can't go back to because of embarrassment or people judging them, evaluation apprehension, where people go back to my work in the office in the city, you know. And, and well, one guy did say to me, he said, he said, I mean, I've got to go back to work And I'm going to scoff that he was trolled very badly, but he got in touch with me. He was— the keyboard warriors tortured this guy. It went on for months, not just weeks. And, and gladly he's okay again, but that took almost a year. I mean, just as one example. So reality television, or whatever it is, whatever it was intended to be, I have still many, many, many serious questions to ask about it, you know. But they've never been answered adequately. And I think we have to come back to basics again. And what I would advocate, by the way, and you and I sing the same hymn sheet here, basically, Kanduk, you know, as a mental health advocate, I think we have to be here, you and I and people like us, to support those who need structure, who need sincerity, and who need the truth about mental health and about who they are as people. They say, I will do the walk with you, I'm right beside you. And the best therapy, as I've said earlier, is a cup of coffee or tea or a chat. That does far more. You don't have to be a wonderful psychologist, psychiatrist. Look, our counselors, the best, you can save more lives just by saying, hand on the shoulder, cup of coffee, come on, my good friend, right? So where you can talk with someone that you trust. It's about trust, it's about empathy, it's about listening ear, giving them that space to talk. I had just a case yesterday, a young man who, you know, just in a pretty bad way about things. Been going on for years, by the way, and his daughter had been the same and not knowing how to grow up because so much confusion. And so get confusion over who they are or what they want to be. So you have You have the past self, you have the current self, you have the developing self, and the future self. And this has been confused by reality television. And many people want to be the Olafur Elma, you know, um, someone who works really hard, devoted, committed. And so celebrity culture, we have this whole construction of who we are, um Our celebrities are different species to us. What has got the celebrity? Well, of course, we know about the production and consumption of celebrity culture. Megabucks, massive industry. But what does it do? Many celebrities do work, as you know, I know, they work very, very, very, very hard to get where they are. But many, many can't cope with it. So there are massive mental health issues around women. We look at Johnny Depp and we look at Amber Heard, we look at the cases at the moment. And, and as I just said yesterday to someone, some journalists, it's not exactly helping an awful lot when we start to talk about young people or older people with histrionic personality disorder. Look, I've been at this for 25 years, you know, and I've, I've really— I've never even seen anyone, you know, personally with histrionic personality disorder. It does exist. It was very popular in the '40s and the '50s and very early '60s. After that, I never see it again. Okay. America is different. It is much more common to talk about histronic there rather than over here. The other thing about it is that young people growing up, we need to remove the labels and the stigma. And I see people with life problems all the time. I said my television work, life problems, and I prefer Somebody can say, Arthur, I got, you know, psychiatrist diagnosed me with personality disorder. The label is there. It's going to be there forever. That's wrong. If I was working in psychiatry now, you know what, Kendall? You know, working in psychiatry is one of the greatest joys in my life, one of the major privileges that I have, and I'm humbled by that. Because it's letting me see the destruction that's going on in not only celebrities, but in men and women all around the world. Because why do we need to talk about someone with bipolar or histrionic or someone who's got, you know, whatever type of multiple personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder? There's so many disorders. But look, the thing we have to talk about is they're a person. They're a person. It's a woman who's breaking. I deal a lot with women, as you know. A woman who's broken in pieces. A woman who nobody wants to understand. A woman who's got— who's been labeled as whatever and has got to carry that label around with her, which will affect her employment. And the more I look and listen to women, and men too, but this one. I'm getting, I'm getting a very clear picture of where we're going wrong in mental health. And when I was an undergraduate, Thomas Szasz, the amazing Swiss psychiatrist, argued, why should we call them mental problems and mental health issues? These, we just call them life problems. And these are life problems that we have I think somewhere around 1 in 20 people have a personality disorder according to Paul Zakatius. But a personality disorder, many can be put right with psychotherapy and treatment, talking therapy. You don't have to carry this around for an entire life. These are life problems that can be certainly fixed with the right people. But we have to work harder at removing stigma and definitely removing the labels. I would do anything within my human power to remove the labels of people with mental illness. People come in, and I get some from GPs regularly and say, Arthur, could you see this person? I see something, I see a category, maybe anxiety, maybe depression, maybe bipolar, whatever. I just want to push that out of the way. And when I'm starting to do my work Whether it's Libby or whether they're somebody off the high street, Kendall, you know, I— my focus is on that individual as a person without the label. Tell me all about it. I'm listening. And that's all. We don't need to be psychiatrists or psychologists. We can do as much psychiatric work. I'd rather be doing more McDonald's, honestly, than I would anywhere else, or sitting in courses and or whatever, or whatever coffee. I would do more of that because all people want to say, will you listen to me? Of course I listen to you, and there's no time limit. I listen to you, and they get time to tell you about that brokenness, the time to shed tears, time to put your arms on and give them a hug. Hey, look, it's okay. This is a life problem. And we all have life problems. And when you normalize and let them see that we all have life problems, whether at work or play or school or whatever, then the biggest part, the emotional healing, has begun to work again. And so it's beginning to change the way we perceive it and interpret it, if that makes sense to you. Yes, it does. And unfortunately, we are Coming to a close of the show. So as I bring the show down, I will be bringing Dr. Arthur back on at a later date, probably in July, if that's okay with Dr. Arthur, because this is such a huge topic, you know, and we break things down and chatting about stuff. But the most key fundamental thing, as Dr. Arthur was saying, No matter if you're a celebrity or not, in the age, you know, which we've talked about, you are simply enough. And if you have issues and you've broken down, reach that arm out and that hand and ask for support. And time is there to heal, time is there to help. And allow that person time, allow a person The kindness of your ear with the softness of your voice to encourage and teach them it's okay. If you have fallen, no matter for whatever, you face that and you stood again. You stood again and you should be accepted no matter what, not labeled. You know, all these labels are easy to put on. To be typecast that cause bullying, that we have life problems. We are not simply, as we started this show, as I will say, we simply are not built up of cells, organs, muscles, skin. Our brain also are allowing in from the universe our human factor of feelings and emotions. And they count just as much. So it'd be lovely to bring Dr. Arthur back on for part 2 of Free Your Mind, but for now, thank you everybody, and thank you, Dr. Arthur. Goodbye.