Dr. Harvey Rosenstock has practiced psychiatry for more than sixty years. He also became an ordained rabbi at the tender age of 73. Daniel Shepley is currently a contract specialist for the United States Navy, has two degrees from Penn State, and is the author of The Other Side of Sanity.
Today, they both join Dr. James Flowers to share the incredible story of how they entered each other’s lives, what inspired Dr. Harvey to pursue psychiatry and why comprehensive diagnostic evaluations are key to healing.
Key Takeaways
01:28 – Dr Harvey Rosenstock and Daniel Shepley join the show to share the incredible story of how they met and how they established a therapeutic alliance
09:34 – The importance of trust
13:21 – A passive-aggressive upbringing
16:57 – How Dr. Harvey and Daniel’s relationship has evolved over the years
19:05 – What inspired Dr. Harvey to pursue psychiatry
23:17 – What was different about Dr. Harvey’s relationship with Daniel
29:24 – Why nothing is impossible
33:59 – What the future holds for Daniel
35:23 – Dr. Flowers thanks Dr. Rosenstock and Daniel for joining today’s show and ends with some words on Comprehensive Diagnostic Evaluations
Resources Mentioned
J. Flowers Health Institute – https://jflowershealth.com
J. Flowers Health Institute Contact – (713) 783-6655
Subscribe on your favorite player: https://understanding-the-human-condition.captivate.fm/listen
Daniel’s Book – https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Sanity-Daniel-Shepley/dp/1732978700
**The views and opinions expressed by our guests are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of J. Flowers Health Institute. Any content provided by our co-host(s) or guests is their opinion and is not intended to reflect the philosophy and policies of J. Flowers Health Institute itself. Nor is it intended to malign any recovery method, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.
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Dr. Harvey Rosenstock And Daniel Shepley – Somewhere Over The Rainbow: Trust, Understanding & Relationships In Psychiatry
A Therapeutic Alliance
I am beyond honored to have Dr. Rosenstock with us and Daniel Shepley, and we are going to talk more about their story here. Dr. Rosenstock has practiced psychiatry for more than 60 years. I have been in practice for 30 years, so I can’t wait to reach that milestone of over 60 years.
I can’t either.
Dr. Rosenstock went to medical school at Oregon Health Science University School of Medicine and his psychiatry residency at Baylor College of Medicine, probably right here in Houston. Dr. Rosenstock also became an ordained rabbi, not at a young age.
I was one of the oldest students.
At the age of 73. Congratulations.
Thank you.
You are only 74 now. Daniel Shepley, he is a contract specialist for the United States Navy, has two degrees from Penn State one in Electrical Engineering and one in Aeronautical Engineering as well as an MBA from Rice University’s Jones School of Business. Congratulations on that, Daniel. Daniel is the author of The Other Side of Sanity, which is what we are going to be discussing a lot about. Welcome to both of you.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Thank you so much, and Daniel, welcome from Pennsylvania.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Nice to meet you.
I wish that you could have been here in person, but we will do that another time. What I would love to start with is the amazing relationship that the two of you have formed over the last many years, this book was written about your life and about the relationship between the two of you and what you were going through. What I’d like to start with, if you don’t mind, Dr. Rosenstock, is the afternoon and early evening that this happened. Can you walk us through that day in your office?
Yes, I remember that very well. I’m getting ready to leave the office. Everybody’s gone. It’s dark outside and I’m on my way out. I don’t want to mention any names. There’s a guy in the waiting room in dark clothing. We call it gothic a little bit. He’s carrying a black satchel. Now, he doesn’t have an appointment, so I don’t know what he is doing there, and he comes in, opens the door, comes right in, sits down right opposite me, puts down the satchel, reaches down, and takes out the satchel a 9-millimeter gun, which is on the front page right here. The same gun and he points it at me, and the muzzle is so close I could bite it.
The next thing he does is he puts it inside of his mouth, back and forth, like a windshield wiper. He says to me, “There’s a bullet in the chamber.” Somehow, it didn’t sound good to me. I see his finger on the trigger and I figured that’s not a good thing, and so there we are. I said to him, “I can see how depressed you are. However, I do my best work with the pistol in the satchel.” With that, Daniel put the pistol in the satchel, and that’s where we began. I have never had a gun pointed at me before with a bullet in the chamber.
Most important words of your life.
That’s true.
How were you physically feeling at that moment?
Had I been a first-year psychiatrist, I might’ve felt differently. My immediate interpretation is he didn’t come to rob me. He’s not a burglar. He had come to a psychiatrist to ask for help. I felt that this behavior was a psychotic way of asking for help. Therefore, I didn’t feel in immediate danger because there was a question there, “Will you help me?” I wanted to help him. That’s what I live for, to help people. I told him, “I will help you, but I don’t operate very well with a gun right at me. It’s a distraction,” but he got the message.
“He sought help from a psychiatrist, and I saw his behavior as a psychotic plea for assistance. I didn’t feel in immediate danger because there was a question beneath it: ‘Will you help me?’ Of course, I wanted to help him—that’s what I live for.”
He also got the message another way. After we talked for about an hour, he went home. I don’t call the police and the SWAT team and so on. Therefore, someone who is in a paranoid psychotic way is asking me another question, “Are you going to, ‘turn me in’?” I didn’t think I needed to do that. I felt we had already established what we call a therapeutic alliance. We could work with that, and then we started regular appointments. A few weeks later, Dan says, “I have got to tell you something, and you can verify this.” He said, “Had you not accepted me as a patient that night, I would have killed you, and then myself.” I said, “I appreciate all that.”
Daniel, coming back over to you, I asked Dr. Rosenstock how he was physically feeling with that threat. Our bodies go into that fight or flight response, and he maintained it because of his wisdom and his experience, and he’s correct. If he had been a green new psychiatrist, you may have peed your pants. Daniel, how were you physically feeling at that moment, sitting in the waiting room and then walking into his office with a gun?
It’s hard to describe unless you’ve ever been seriously depressed where the brain chemistry is different from a normal person, where there’s a cloud in your mind. You can’t get rid of it. Where you are in a dark place at the point of giving up. I was at that point. I was at the point of giving up and had Dr. Rosenstock not agreed to help me, I would have killed him and myself that night. I needed professional help. I knew it, and he agreed to help me.
For the first couple of years, I watched it hypervigilant. I watched for any inconsistency or any sign of deviation from the norm, and he was very consistent, patient, and helpful. I didn’t see any inconsistency like what I saw in my first therapy experience, which I wrote about in the book The Crocodile Up Down, and so that’s what we built upon. To get back to your original topic of our relationship is. It was built on that consistency and that trust. That was established up front.
What’s so interesting is, I read that it wasn’t an instant feeling of trust, but it took you a number. Was it three years to truly feel the trust and the therapeutic alliance and relationship?
Yes, it was. During those three years, I would have 9 millimeter nights where I would go to bed with the loaded CC9 on my head, wake up the next morning, put it away, and then tell Dr. Rosenstock about it the next time I saw him. Those were very dry times for me, but he was consistent, he was helpful, and so I continued the process. He put me on strong medicine, which was part of the solution that I was missing from the first therapy experience that I went through, and that helped too.
You had a diagnosis for him. By the time he left the office that evening, what was the diagnosis?
Importance Of Trust
He had paranoid psychosis. Trust was very important then. It wasn’t a situation because of his background and so on, and the severity that I could do it alone. I felt that he needed to be part of group therapy. Now, it took me a while to convince him that I’m going to organize an entire group around you. I’m going to put certain people in that will bring us together so that we can catalyze the progress, it took a while for Dan to believe that I would do that, but that’s exactly what we did. That was also part of the important ongoing therapy. It’s in the book that we had to have a community of support as well. We had a microcosmic world that was working with us beyond the individual psychotherapy sessions. Beyond the psychopharmacologic interventions.
What was your initial psychopharmacologic intervention?
We used an antipsychotic medication. We used antidepressants, and we also were doing something to cool down the anxiety, anxiolytic medication and we would titrate these things until we found exactly what made Dan comfortable. The most important thing was to reduce the internalized rage, and also we had to obviate the paranoia because with the paranoia, which was an end-stage part of the rage, we wouldn’t get anywhere, and there were at least six people that might not be alive if we failed. That’s and so that was all part of the construct and to reenter the world and see it from a different lens.
Without your wisdom that day, there may have been 5 or 6 other people who may not have lived through that evening, correct?
Correct. As I wrote in the book, I had gone hunting at one point, and it was only when I failed to recognize that my target was planting shrubs in the corner of a tightly fenced backyard, that she escaped her execution. I was serious about hurting people.
Would you talk to the audience a little bit about the events that led up to this? Where were you and what were you thinking that day and that evening walking into Dr. Rosenstock’s office and how did you choose Dr. Rosenstock?
I had been in a therapy experience first that ended very badly. A local teaching university there in Houston. We called it Every Man’s University. The book, and that precipitated shortly thereafter, I interviewed with the Central Intelligence Agency. That was my career goal, to be a case officer, recruiting and running supplies to hostile territory. That didn’t go well. Naturally, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.
Two years later, I’m comatose, psychologically. I decided to buy the guns, I have the guns. I put the gun to my head and I say, “Do I kill myself now or do I pursue legal revenge? I chose to pursue a lawsuit. I hired an attorney. He was not the best attorney that I could have hired for my cause, let’s say that. Did some things that I alleged were not. Ultimately, he quit on me, leaving me pro se against the state of Texas, the university, and the individual defendants, which led to my White Knight attorney. The White Knight attorney recommended Dr. Rosenstock, and that’s how I ended up in his office with my 9-millimeter.
Passive-Aggressive Upbringing
Early on in the book, you state that you learned everything you know about passive aggression from your parents. Can you elaborate on your childhood and the effect that it may have had on this condition?
In addition to a genetic predisposition to paranoia, perhaps. My parents would play the, “What did your father say? What did your mother say? What did you ask for permission?” The answer was always no. Between those games, my mother would use house cleaning and rifle through all the drawers. There were no secrets. “I’m your mother, I have to know what children are into.”
I perfectly love her response, but it is detrimental to my development. Passive aggression came from childhood. My parents lost a parent in the two years before I was born. Emotionally, they were still negotiating their relationship at the time that I was born, and that instability, a child between, what is it? 0 and 4 or 0 and 5 is when the emotional stability gets set. I believe Dr. Rosenstock could speak to it, but that was a very unstable time for me, and that resulted in the growth of mental illness.
“A child between zero and four is when their emotional stability gets set. And that was a very unstable time for me, which resulted in mental illness.”
Would you agree with that?
Yes. When I was finished with general psychiatry, I also took a fellowship in child psychiatry, and I was on the witness stand one time working on a case involving adults. Sure, and the attorney on the other side. He said, “Why did you study child psychiatry? Maybe you don’t belong in this courtroom.” I said to him, “I studied child psychiatry because I never met an adult that was born a child, and so we know that the dynamics of adulthood are directly related to the childhood years.
We have to see where you come from. What was your environment? Where are the ethical principles? How do you engage the world? Are you willing to go outside certain kinds of rules and so on? If you don’t have that, because we have some parents that are so guilty if you don’t do something. You have to understand where you are coming from. Otherwise, you don’t engage the world in a reasonable, which I would say normal fashion. There’s a wide range of normalities.
Several times you requested a referral to a psychiatrist and you were advised against it. Do you feel this advice contributed to the worsening of your condition?
Yes. I needed medicine. More importantly, I needed an expert. You don’t fight infantry with infantry, you bring in the tags. You don’t fight a rifle with a rifle, you get a machine gun. I needed a bigger witness for my lawsuit, and my first attorney would not have any of it. He was concerned that if I got diagnosed, it would sabotage the case. I don’t know why. I’m speculating. I don’t know that fact. For whatever reason, he wanted to use the incompetent psychologist whose sole profession is diagnosing people, but couldn’t formulate a diagnosis for me as an expert witness. That was frustrating.
Evolving Relationship
In mental health, we often talk about the secondary gain of patients. This sounds like a little bit of secondary gain on the legal side. You were building up. You went into his office. You experienced that evening. How did the relationship continue to evolve and develop over the years between the two of you?
For the first three years, I watched him vigilantly. Then he got me in a group. We were in a group for nine years. A long time. Many, many years. At the same time, I was continuing with him on an individual basis. He would help me with the process by filling the group as well as the outside witness. He helped me to maintain my job to pay for therapy. Several times I wanted to quit, but Dr. Rosenstock insisted, “No, the economy’s bad.”
As I wrote in the book, when my manager tried to fire me, Dr. Rosenstock helped me to appeal to the higher power, to the vice president, with a letter, and I was able to remain employed. The relationship grew with trust, mutual respect, and all. I love Dr. Rosenstock. He’s become a father figure to me. He’s worldly, he’s knowledgeable, he travels, he’s multi-lingual. Everything that you want in a father. My father, I respected and loved him dearly, but he dropped out of high school to earn his GED to go work for his family, earned his GED in the Army, and never went beyond that level of education. Dr. Rosenstock became a mentor, a father figure, and his love in the relationship as well as mutual respect and trust.
Pursuing Psychiatry
He has that feeling of trust that he didn’t have in the beginning, and he gained that over some time. You are an incredible psychiatrist and were able to develop the therapeutic alliance and the therapeutic relationship with him. What brought you into the field of psychiatry?
I believe that you can be wired to want to help people. When I was very young, like thirteen or so, I was interested in going into the ministry or becoming a rabbi, for example. I already started teaching at age twelve. I was leading junior services and doing this, and a group came from Los Angeles and they wanted to give me a full scholarship before I went to high school and so on. I told my parents I’d like to do that, and they said, “You probably ought to go to high school,” and they had a more powerful vote. It’s like that Broadway play, A Majority of One with Gertrude Berg. Anyhow, I went to high school and so on.
Then I decided I wanted to go to medical school, but then closest to the ministry, so to speak. It wouldn’t be surgery and cardiovascular, cutting people up and putting and sewing together,r and so on. Maybe psychiatry or something like that would appeal to me, and when I was at the University of Oregon Medical School, for example, those years, we had one of the leading family therapists in the entire country there. We had a behavioralist, a very famous person.
I got interested in how family dynamics and so on work, and I said, “I’m interested in psychiatry. I’m fascinated with neurology.” I decided I do a summer internship in internal medicine, and I did one in psychology, for example, experimental work. I put it all together and became more and more determined to go into psychiatry. Once I had my internship and I did a private hospital in the emergency room of a county hospital that was in Phoenix, Arizona, then I applied, I’m going to go to psychiatry. I’m going to go to residency. Except at that time, there was a war called Vietnam.
The United States government said, “We want you. You are a graduate. A doctor.” That’s how I came to Texas. It’s an interesting little side bit. When I find out this, I’m going to have to be drafted. I have to go into the Navy as a general medical officer. I called the White House and they transferred me to the Pentagon. I’m not that shy. I wind up talking to a commander, and he happens to be the one guy who takes each person and puts a place on the map where they are going.
He said, “I have got your application right on my desk.” I said, “I do speak Spanish. I figured that’s different from Vietnamese.” I figured, “I might go to Spain or something,” and he said, “Would Beeville, Texas, be okay?” I never heard that. I said, “Beeville, Texas, USA?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “I believe we worked that out.” That’s how I came to Texas, and then I worked with Baylor College of Medicine. I was the general medical officer and took care of psychiatric patients. Instead of going to Sinai in Detroit, which is where I was accepted, I wound up at Baylor. They said, “You’ve already applied.” I said, “I didn’t apply.” “You’ve already been accepted.” There I was. I have been here ever since.
You may know this little town. I’m from Alice, Texas.
I have patients to this day in Alice, Texas.
Is that so?
Yes.
My grandfather was a general surgeon in Alice, Texas, and got there by coincidence.
I have been to Alice, Texas.
My grandfather built the very first PNS hospital in Alice, Texas way back in the ‘40s, I believe.
I am working on some legal cases out of Alice, Texas.
I bet you are.
Then you go to Corpus Christi for the big city.
That’s right. In Naval Air Station.
I was at the Naval Air Station in Corpus.
That is amazing. My family has a ranch outside of Freer, Texas, and there’s a small naval air station with an airstrip out northwest of Freer. When I was a little kid, we’d go out to the ranch on the weekends, and the airplanes and the naval pilots would come over and practice.
When I was in Beeville, I was a naval air advance so I’m familiar.
Dr. Harvey’s Relationship With Daniel
Would you say that Daniel was out of the realm of your other patient population? What was different about the relationship and the therapeutic alliance with Daniel?
The main difference is I can usually easily, almost on automatic pilot, get a relationship with a new person. This works. It’s comfortable when you are confronted with “How are you? Life or death,” and that’s a completely different situation. Having had a few thousand patients before, as I understood the dynamics, we are going to do okay. I have this belief that wherever you start, you can always do better. That’s where I am.
“As I understood the dynamics, having had a few thousand patients before, I knew we were going to do ok. I had this belief that wherever you start you can always do better, which is where I am.”
I knew we’d have to get through rough times first. I knew he had to learn to trust me. Didn’t happen in 1, 2, or 3 years. After three years, he’s pretty sure. I’m pretty consistent with what I say and what I believe. Even if we disagree on something, he understands. “It’s for my good. Although I may not accept that,” but at least he got that idea. Now it’s interesting. Daniel even checks on me. He calls up, “How are you doing?” I said, no. “How’s your wife doing?”
It was interesting. I checked on him and got this new dog. This dog was born with a missing part of a paw, and Daniel, I want to take him out. I’m going to love him. I’m going to take care of him, and that human kindness permeates. Through the family dynamics, even to take care of animals. It’s a pervasive love that says, “I care.”
Yes, I do. He saved my life. Not my life, but other lives as well. What do you say to someone who saved your life and then stuck with you?
“He saved my life. Not just my life, but other lives as well. What do you say to someone who’s saved your life and stuck with you for twenty to twenty five years?”
That day Daniel was both homicidal and suicidal. We have a new phone number in the United States, not 911 but 988.
Yes. For mental health.
When people are feeling either suicidal or having a mental health crisis, Daniel, all across the nation, you’ll be able to pick up the phone. Anyone can pick up the phone and dial 988 and get a trained counselor on the phone to talk to who can give the person individual guidance on where to go, what to seek, and where to seek it. How to seek it, and send them to people like, Dr. Rosenstock.
I have to tell you one more thing. I discovered in knowing Daniel that he has a spiritual dimension. If you look at the book, you’ll see that at his request, there is a prayer book on the front cover. It’s Hebrew. I often quote things that were meaningful to Dan based on some of the philosophy in this particular prayer book. Before we had this new number that was coming out, sometimes patients would say to me, “I don’t know what to do when I get upset. I don’t know where I’m going to go. What can you recommend?”
If I know they have a spiritual dimension, I will say, “What number do you call if you are in trouble in general?” They say 911. I said, “I have got it for you.” Psalm 91:11. They said, “What does that say?” I said, “I will give you the Hebrew,” and I taught some patients the Hebrew. For God has commanded his angels for what reason? To look after you, to watch after you in all your paths and all your ways.” I said, “You’ve got angels all you have to do is ask for them.” In Psalm 34, it confirms that. We won’t go there right now. They will use that and they will go back and they will check their bibles and so on, and they have something to hang on to, and I will often quote that or I will talk about certain songs that I cherish because they help you get through things.
We talked about two of those songs. Can we talk about them again?
One of my favorite songs is Barbra Streisand, and I love the title, and I love how she sings it. People who need people are the luckiest in the world. You have to be in a relationship with the world, with people. Otherwise, you become the Unabomber out there in some state someplace. That is so important. We bring people together. Putting the group together in this particular situation was part of it. The other songs that I like so much are That You Can Pray for Hope and You Can Do Things, I mentioned the number one song in America for the 20th century as judged by the Hollywood people is Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
It was written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen in New York, and these young men were born in New York, but their families came from Russia and Ukraine and that part of the world, and they were subjected to the pogroms. They said, “There’s got to be a better place. There’s got to be a place where you dream, and if you dream, those dreams can come true.” Where is that? Somewhere over the rainbow. Bluebirds can fly over the rainbow. I can’t do it. Those songs speak to me and a lot of people think it’s a Disney song, but if you study the words, you’ll be inspired.
Nothing Is Impossible
Something else that reminds me of what you and I spoke about, and I share this philosophy. Daniel, I would think in your life that you share this philosophy. I say it a little bit differently than Dr. Rosenstock, but I believe that if we can see it if we can visualize it, we can achieve it. The way you said it to me is that nothing is impossible. Everything is possible.
The impossible takes a little longer and any challenge that I have had, it’s been a major challenge. If we take our time carefully think about it and keep an optimistic outlook, we are going to get there. It’s been my experience, that even with the most dramatic things we can get there, and I give you one example. I will give you the example that one of our dear friends was a famous Holocaust artist, Alice Lok Cahana, and we would be together with the whole family Thanksgiving. One Thanksgiving to be more specific, while I was chewing on a drumstick, we wanted to get right down.
“Any kind of challenge that I’ve had, it’s been my experience, if we take our time, and carefully think about it, and keep an optimistic outlook, we’re gonna get there.”
I said, “Alice, you are such a tremendous artist. You’ve taught my grandchildren about your paintings. Alice, you’ve been honored by the BBC, standing ovation committees, United States Congress. You’ve been honored all over the world and in Jerusalem, all kinds of places. You’ve been collected by presidents all over the world. The only place in the world where you haven’t been honored yet is the Vatican. She said, “It hasn’t happened in 60 years. It is not going to happen. I said, “Alice, now you’ve given me a challenge.”
My wife helped me, and we made connections with an archbishop, then with a cardinal, eventually to the Secretary of State of the Vatican, and eventually to Dr. Francesco Borrelli, who was head of all the art of the Vatican billions of dollars of art. Another person was Archbishop Harvey, who became a cardinal and was the advisor to Pope Benedict XVI. I offered the Pope an idea.
“I will deliver to the Vatican any painting that your artist decides he wants for the Vatican at no charge to you. All I want in return is a promise that you’ll keep the message for every generation past our lives.” I wanted this particular Pope because when Alice was a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, she was sent from Sarvar, Hungary, in the last stages of the war, to Auschwitz.
At the same time, the Pope was in the Nazi regime, and I thought, “If I could bring them together in the eighth decade of life, what a fantastic, never-before-done moment in history.” I could do this maybe in the spirit of what we call the Second Vatican Council, where the community is supposed to reach out to the Jewish community, the Catholic community, and so on.
That was my proposal. That’s a short version of the story. I received a word from the Holy Father. “Please come. I accept this. Come on a Wednesday.” I said yes. We were there and my wife was there with me, Alice, and her family. We were up there with the Holy Father. The Swiss Guard came down from the apostolic palace with this gigantic painting. We were there with the artists. We had 30,000 people down below in St. Peter’s Square, and it was a beautiful moment as we discussed the painting with Pope Benedict XVI.
This turned out to be the highlight or one of the great highlights of Alice’s life. Here is this poor girl who could have been killed many times in Auschwitz. That’s lots of stories. It winds up with the Holy Father with her painting, talking about the Holocaust first with the Sistine Chapel, where it hung for a while, and then to the Museum of the Vatican. It’s now permanent history. Never been done before. It’s a wonderful thing that everybody told me was not possible when we started. I said, “It’s not impossible. It’s going to take a little longer. It’s possible.” I feel so proud of Alice.
Future For Daniel
I’m sure she feels proud that you did that. Daniel, where do you see yourself a few years from now? Speaking of the impossible becoming possible, at one time in your life, you thought tomorrow was impossible. Where are you today and how are you feeling? What do you see for yourself in the future?
I’m focused on helping my parents. They are not going to live forever. Odds are my father will pass before my mother, but they are both going to pass. I don’t know if it’ll be 5, 7, or 9 but they are going to pass. At that point, I will probably relocate to Texas, maybe Tennessee or Florida, a state with no big income tax, and I look for a relationship. That’s the one thing that’s missing from my life right now, my relationship.
Part of the reason that Dr. Rosenstock convinced me to write my book, or I convinced myself, I should say so that I could give the book to whoever was interested in me and say, “You are single. You are nearly 60, and you’ve never been married. You don’t have any kids. What’s wrong with you? Can you accept me? Read the book. That’s my baggage. Let’s talk.”
Comprehensive Diagnostic Evaluations
In the future, there is a beautiful relationship ahead. People who need people are the luckiest in the world. Daniel, thank you so much for writing this book. Thank you for being a part of our lives. Thank you for being a part of Dr. Rosenstock’s life. I’m sure he is very grateful for that.
I am.
I know Daniel must be.
Great for him and great for you, Dr. Flowers.
You bet. We’ll finish with something that we do here a lot at J. Flowers Health Institute, and that’s comprehensive diagnostic evaluations. I believe that when someone is in a difficult time in their life, in their family or themselves, and they are not sure what is going on in their life, their psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, or family wants to know a little bit more about it. We offer this, I believe, in this 360-degree approach to health and wellness, looking at each integrative part of our lives What’s your philosophy on doing a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation?
That’s the first class. That’s the best you can do because everybody is made up of components. There’s your social life, your community life, your social skills. You want to know where you are a little deficient, and how we can do this. For example, we do Neurotherapy in my office, and so on. We want to put every parameter that we can to make this person whole again, to the extent possible, given what we have, what we know in their particular skills, but that psychosocial model, the entire holistic individual is first-class, top-quality. I love your philosophy. It’s the best philosophy.
Coming from you, that means the world to me. Thank you so much for your time and being here. Daniel, thanks for coming into it with us. I want to meet you in person when you get down to Houston. I want to remind everybody that a clear diagnosis, I believe, is the key to fully, truly thriving, looking at good health. Thank you all for being here.
I could add a comment. Dr. Rosenstock will say that with the right treatment, with the right diagnosis, anything is possible, but if you do an internet search for the search term “patients harmed by psychotherapy,” you’ll find reports and statistics that say that 30% to 40% of patients in counseling are not fully benefiting. They are not getting better. They show up week after week, they pay their money. The doctor, no matter how well-intentioned, well-meaning, or well-educated, they don’t seem to be getting better. Another 5% to 10% are harmed by the therapy that they are receiving. The right diagnosis and the right treatment are critical to success. It’s both, a diagnosis and a treatment plan.
I could not agree with you more, and that is exactly why I founded the J. Flowers Health Institute, Daniel, because of that. I believe that we can go to therapy for years and have the wrong diagnosis. Dr. Rosenstock was wise or continues to be wise, but he was certainly wise and experienced when he met you and was able to work with you for many years successfully, but a lot of people don’t get the gift that you had in life, and so a proper diagnosis is so important for that roadmap to health. Thank you for saying that. Daniel, have a great weekend. Thank you for being here. We’ll see you soon. Dr. Rosenstock, thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
We’d love to have you back.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you, Dr. Rosenstock.
My pleasure. It’s an honor.
Thank you so much. Good to see you.
