“Fear,” Dr. Mark McDonald says, “is the mechanism by which people lose their ability to think rationally.”
In this recent
episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek sits down with Dr. Mark McDonald to discuss the physical and psychological damage done to the American people by COVID-19 rules and regulations and what we as individuals can do to escape our prison of fear.
McDonald is a psychiatrist and the author of “United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis.”
Mr. Jekielek: You wrote “United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis.” What’s mass delusional psychosis?
Dr. Mark McDonald: What I mean by mass delusional psychosis is a large group of people, a society, and specifically the United States, all at the same time individually deciding, whether consciously or not, to stop thinking rationally. I came to that conclusion by witnessing and observing behaviors, both in my day-to-day life and in my psychiatric practice, that were fundamentally bizarre to me. They weren’t grounded in reality.
I’m not talking about political positions, but about basic day-to-day behaviors. They just didn’t make sense. And they were happening all over the country. Many people—50, 60, 70 percent of them—are just not thinking clearly anymore.
Mr. Jekielek: What were the hints that you saw?
Dr. McDonald: Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum or what your ideology is about life, there are certain fundamental truths and realities we all have to agree on. I say to my patients when they come in, “Look, we may see things differently. We may have different feelings, orientations about life, but if we can’t agree on certain fundamental points of reality, then we can’t have a conversation.”
It’s the same way with life. For example, there are different degrees of keeping ourselves safe. Some people are more risk-averse, and some people are less risk-averse. But if we can’t agree that there’s absolutely no rational or medical reason to be wearing a surgical mask while you’re walking outside in a park by yourself—if we can’t agree on that, then there’s a breakdown in conversation. There’s a breakdown in reality.
Fear is the mechanism by which people lose their ability to think rationally. To justify the behavior as rational because you’re told to do it is a false argument. And we’ve been incredibly frightened and intimidated in the past couple years.
Mr. Jekielek: Most masking policies are gone. A lot of people are thinking, “Okay, I guess we’re done.”
Dr. McDonald: This sounds great. We’re all free. We’re all safe. Mandates are over. No more distancing, no more testing, no more facial coverings. We’ll just move on.
The problem is that behavior has fundamentally changed.
People have taken in the feeling, the experience of being afraid all of the time. So even if they’re told they can be safe now without masks, they still want to wear them. They insist on wearing them.
I’m really concerned about what the next crisis will bring, the next demand for us to change our behavior. Now that the government, corporations, and media know that we will blindly follow whatever they tell us, what’s going to be the next stage?
Mr. Jekielek: I watched a video of a group of adults and children in masks in front of New York City Hall singing about how they want to have masks. How do you help people overcome a situation like this?
Dr. McDonald: The first thing that you need to do as an individual is acknowledge that you’re living in a state of fear.
It’s really important for people to start accepting that these behaviors—avoiding people, putting on masks, staying away from social gatherings, canceling weddings and funerals—aren’t helpful. I’m not looking for a government top-down approach to fix this problem. This is an individual issue and each individual has to confront it and move forward.
Mr. Jekielek: This makes me think about your philosophy of psychiatry, which you discuss in your book. It would be great if you could tell us how you think about this.
Dr. McDonald: As I said, I tell my patients when they come in that for us to work together successfully, we have to start from the same reality. If the world I live in and the world you live in are completely different, if there’s absolutely no overlap, there’s no way for us to talk about things. We have to accept that there are certain basic positions necessary for a healthy life.
So if you allow your feelings to determine right and wrong, what should or shouldn’t be done, we’re dead in the water. If it feels better to you to eat pizza and ice cream all day and you won’t budge from that position, then I can’t help you with your diet. If you say, “I feel really good about eating it, but it’s causing me problems. I know it’s not right,” then we have somewhere to go.
As we get older and become adults, it means setting aside our feelings, becoming less narcissistic, and acknowledging a reality that may not conform to our feelings. We’ve tossed that out the window now. Everything is subjective and feeling-based. Everything is narcissistic. That’s driving a lot of these irrational mass behaviors.
Mr. Jekielek: Dr. Scott Atlas says, and I’m paraphrasing, that during this pandemic, we’ve used our children as shields and that we should never do that. In any reasonable society, it’s the adults that need to be shields. What are your thoughts?
Dr. McDonald: Children have been the sacrificial lambs of this pandemic. I’m going to call it a pandemic of fear, because that’s really what it is. It’s not a medical pandemic. It’s a pandemic of fear.
Mr. Jekielek: So you think the pandemic of fear is a much more serious thing?
Dr. McDonald: I know the pandemic of fear is a more serious thing. Look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s raw data in terms of deaths. Ninety-four percent of all of the recorded deaths were of people who were suffering from three or four serious comorbidities. And the average age of death actually exceeds the average lifespan of the American citizen. But putting that aside, the number of people who have died in the past year just of drug overdoses has now exceeded 100,000 Americans. The increase in cancer, the increased incidence of heart disease, the increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide have gone through the roof.
Mr. Jekielek: When people engage in irrational behaviors such as mask-wearing, your contention is that they should be helped. How do we do that?
Dr. McDonald: When I wrote my first book, “United States of Fear,” my goal was to describe how we got here. What was it that led to this fear? But now when I’m asked “How do we get out of this as individuals and as a nation?” my answer is very different than it was in 2021. That’s why I started writing a second book, “Freedom From Fear: A 12-Step Guide to an Individual and National Recovery.” I’m using the addiction model to describe fear and how to treat it.
What’s fundamental now is to be honest and address the psychology behind the fear and to know that the first step in freeing yourself to think rationally and make good decisions is to acknowledge that you’re scared.
You may also need psychiatric help. You may need a therapist or a medication. That’s totally fine too. That’s why people come to see me. But you have to be the one to determine your direction, not your feelings, but your mind. That’s so important. My goal is to get people to think for themselves.
You also need support. You need to tune out a lot of what I call the dealer of the drug, the fear drug, which is the media. You need to shut that off.
Why keep turning on the same station that’s causing you anxiety every day? That’s not a good idea. Shut it down. Go read a book. Go outside, play sports. Hang out with people who aren’t highly anxious.
It’s important as well to be honest with yourself and acknowledge that by doing what you were told, you didn’t necessarily do good. You can have the best of intentions and still cause tremendous harm. You can acknowledge that you tried to do what was right. At the same time, you can apologize, not for following instructions, but for the fact that you harmed somebody—because that’s what you did.
Moving forward means holding yourself fully accountable without excuses, without rationalizations. It’s the only way for you to grow and become a better person.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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