#15 | Part 1 Dr Mark Rackley - Hear From Ex Resident Psychologist On Big Brother

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Even though I'm doing the job 18 years, I'm still learning.

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So nice to come on to what you do and to see you speak so plainly about subjects that are really, really complex.

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That's it.

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Growing up.

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I'm going through my mental problems, joe's going through his. We didn't have anyone to relate to Yesterday. Dr Mark Ratcliffe, thanks for coming on. Yay, pleasure to finally meet you.

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Likewise, likewise Virtual friends. Yeah, virtual friends.

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We spoke a while ago, probably like three months ago, and it's nice to figure out a date where we can properly set this up and there's so much information coming for you guys. We've got tons planned on men's mental health. We've got ADHD and the myths of ADHD, toxic masculinity We've got so much more. But first off, obviously we know a lot about you, but for the viewers and listeners out there can you share a bit about your story and what you do?

:: 00:51

Yes, so thank you, lads, for having me on.

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It was a pleasure. Big fan of your work.

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So I'm a psychologist. I'm an adolescent and adult psychologist, so my area is mental health. So I'm from Dublin. I did all my training in Dublin and I worked in Dublin for a little bit and I moved over to the UK 14 years ago, yeah, and I spent seven of those years working for the NHS in adult mental health services and then the last seven years I have my own practice in Southwest London. So in my own practice now I see teenagers, I see adults and I cover all areas of mental health that you kind of would expect a psychologist to cover. So I treat patients with depression, PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, autism, ADHD, all the stuff that covers mental health I treat, and my patients range from torturing up to my oldest patients, 86.

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Really, so, yeah, so I cover like the whole life Everything. Yeah, yeah.

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And it's great, I love it. I love it because it's it's. It's always interesting when you're working with people, because obviously no two people are the same and no two people's experience of mental health is the same. So, even though, like I'm doing the job 18 years, like I'm still learning, because there's so much about the brain we don't know and I learned so much from my patients about their stories and what it was like for them and how did they end up having this particular problem.

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So yeah, that's what I'm doing. Yeah, that's great. I can't wait to get into it all. One thing I'd say first as well is you have your own podcast as well.

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I do have my own podcast. Yes, I'm trying to. I'm trying to. The thing when you do my job is you? I kind of do this.

I sit in a room with another person and I have a very private conversation with them and it it's great, but it's very contained. And I kind of felt, well, therapy is great, but it's only great for the people that are in therapy. But if you're not in therapy or you're afraid to go to therapy or you can't afford it or whatever it might be, then I kind of felt like, well, what I'm, like I kind of need to take, take it outside of my office and put it on a bigger platform and my, my patients are hilarious. But like, oh, could you recommend a podcast? Listen to it. I'm like, well, not for what you're asking me for now.

So I just said oh, listen, make your own. To myself.

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So that's great.

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So I'm fortunate if I know loads of doctors who are brilliant at what they do. So I basically just rounded up my mates and said right, you're an expert on anorexia.

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Let's have a chat.

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So I've just brought all my mates on to talk about and that's the great thing I suppose about the podcast is it's doctors talking to doctors.

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Yeah, that's important, it's important to be having anyway.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And the public wouldn't get to hear that, like, unless you're in a doctor's office, you won't hear that conversation. So I just thought, well, we're not practicing magic in our offices. So I wanted just to bring those conversations out because I felt they were really important that everybody could hear that stuff.

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So that's what I love most about it actually is that we'll talk about social media. I'm sure later on, but I think what I found most refreshing from what the stuff that I saw review is that social media is just full of nonsense.

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It's so full of rubbish.

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It's so nice to come on to what you do and just speak so plainly about subjects that are really, really complex.

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That's it.

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It was that breaking that stigma between what can be really awkward conversations and just having someone who's actually in the field themselves talk about it so plainly.

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It was just fantastic to see that. But I felt that was so important because, like that, was the time to get us like what do you do? Well, I'll tell you what.

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I do.

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And I think it just takes away all that like mistreated normalizes, like this is like if you have a mental health problem when you come and see a psychologist, this is what we're gonna talk to you about and this is how we're gonna try and help you understand it. So I wanted to make it accessible. But also I do feel I get into it that there's a lot of resistance sometimes about coming to see us because people are afraid. So I wanted to take all that stuff. There's nothing to be afraid of.

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We're not dragons. No, that's the thing. I think it's that. I think it is intimidating.

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Oh, it's huge intimidating when you hear a psychologist.

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It sounds scary, right it's a really intimidating word.

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I'll show you here that all the time I think when you hear that, well, I'd like to tell people what I do for a living.

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Because I'm like you're moving away from me, Chipping away at them gradually.

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What's your sort of view on podcasting in the mental health space as a whole, like, do you reckon there should be more of them? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, this is what we spoke about so many times. Definitely.

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I just feel like there's so much to cover, like I'm doing my podcast a year and I've got 25 episodes and I haven't even scratched the surface of what I need to talk about and the people I need to bring out, because the whole field is massive.

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Like it's just massive.

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And like you could spend hours talking about one subject. So I do feel like there's definitely. I think there's more conversations that need to be had, and that's why I love coming on your podcast, because you guys are doctors, you're two guys who are talking about mental health, so you're relatable in terms of people will see you guys and say, great, I see myself and those guys, but they can't relate to me because they're not psychologists. So I think the blending of that is brilliant.

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Yeah, agreed. That's kind of why we started as well was. We were like, when we were growing up and I'm going through my mental health problems, joe was going through his is, we didn't have anyone to relate to. That was the main reason we did episode one was we just wanted to be that for someone else, because we didn't have it. And now, as you said, collabing with people like yourself who know 10 times more than we do.

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We just know from experience and what we've looked at and what we lived through. This is what you've actually done your whole life.

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And it's like, in my opinion, something so beautiful in that connection, where you can have someone who knows everything and also two guys that have lived through it and still live through it, and those different aspects, and I don't think you get that from anything else other than a podcast or maybe a YouTube video.

That's why I think there should be so many more mental health podcasts as a whole. We always say this it's just, there's not like in my opinion, it's not like a competition, it's like just do it, Like, please, just do it, yeah totally, I think, as some doctors are, and I get it like because it's a job and a profession and a reputation.

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They're a little bit afraid to jump into that space and I understand that. But I think like, as long as you're not going to say anything outrageous, then like I don't see how it can be a bad thing.

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I agree, and we did a bit of research when we saw you on Big Brother as the resident psychologist on the brother in 2012.

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In another life.

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How was it as an experience it?

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was. It was a magic imagine For anybody that's watched Big Brother. It was great fun. I was supposed to say that from the outset. It was great fun, very different, because I've never. I'd never done live TV and I'd never done commentary, but it was.

For me it was a fascinating experience because I'd sit in front of my telly like every night watching Big Brother and I was taking notes on what was going on and what I was observing. And then we'd have a meeting on Friday with the production team and the editors and we'd say we're just not going to talk about this on Sunday, like fine. And then we go up to the studios and we'd record it live. And it was fascinating because something like that it's like big brother, certainly back then and it was massive and everyone was watching it. And I found it really interesting as well because you could see all the kind of. Basically, it was a big psychological experiment when you put all these people in this confined space. But then you start to give them all these different tasks and you'd start to see, well, people used to forget that they were in the house because that became their normality and you could see that they would change in terms of adapting to the space, so fascinating stuff.

Yeah, and I'm looking back. I'm so glad I did it, Because-.

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That's such a cool thing, yeah, and what an experience exactly. Do you find a lot of people struggled in there.

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Oh, you have Joe. Yeah, because we would be Was there more?

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behind the scenes that like wouldn't go on TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah totally, totally, totally.

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So they would obviously edit it for television. But personally I couldn't do it, I just wouldn't-.

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I'd hate to do it.

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I don't think I could cope with it at all actually just being locked down like that. So for the people that did do it I mean huge respect because I mean that is hard.

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That is really, really hard. I think it's that type of person to be able to do it. Oh, totally, I couldn't think of anything worse.

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I generally-.

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Oh, we need that.

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We struggle enough on social media. I don't want to really put my life out there on social media.

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We don't have a choice.

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And we, the people we meet and collect is amazing.

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I think it's more than confinement no clocks, not knowing what sort of time the date is other than the sun above, and that sort of confinement, and it's sort of like, more like prison, like it's sort of being.

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I couldn't cope with that at all, and also they put it like and I do like what they do they put it like a broad spectrum of society in there, so you could be stuck in the house of somebody. You just absolutely need to test.

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Imagine living like a Makes great TV though. Well, exactly because that brings the comfort, yeah, exactly.

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What kind of changes do they've made? Because there's a new series coming out, I think soon, yeah, soon. I think they've made changes as a result of everything's been going on in the mental health space, to protect the people that are going in there.

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Yeah, so there's a lot of talk about that. I think the I don't know now, but I know certainly when I was doing it I didn't do the vetting, I did the kind of more on-screen stuff, but they do have a vetting process for when people are applying and auditioning, and I think, especially because of what happened on Love Island, like that's really kind of come to the fore now where they've really got to protect the people going in there Cause again like these are.

You're putting your whole life out there and the aftermath is what you kind of have to it's really hard On the Love Island point.

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We had Alex Bowen on who was-.

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I've seen that too, yes, so he was excellent.

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He spoke so well about, like Love Island as a whole. But, he was saying, like, in terms of social media and stuff, you need a thick skin if you do something like that. But a lot of people don't, and I'm not necessarily someone who has a thick skin for social media. If he got a rude comment, he'd be like with my ADHD.

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It really bothers me.

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So if someone doesn't You're rejection sensitive to it.

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If someone doesn't have thick skin and they're doing something like that.

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What advice would you give them?

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I would think with that Like we think with social media is, I think it's a little bit like knowing the enemy. So, social media, you don't need to be a genius to figure out that there's people who are on there who are a very bad mental health, who have an agenda and who will use it for very nasty means. I think if you're gonna go on to it, you need to be very clear that that's the space you're jumping into. Like there is lovely people on there and there's lovely stuff that can go on, but also there's a really nasty side to it that you will get people that will troll you.

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It's inevitable.

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Yeah, it's inevitable, absolutely. So I think if you can separate out well, that's not personal, because it can't be, because the person doesn't know you but if you're the maybe more sensitive type or if you struggle with being able to separate out the personal from the fact that this is a stranger, then I think you need to think about being on there.

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Did you find that the transition to social media and doing what you're doing that was just absolutely amazing. Did you find that was tough going to social media, or was that quite easy for you?

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Yeah, it's funny, Because of my job I Seed our horrors of social media Course the damage you could do to your clients? Yeah, totally cuz I, cuz I love to my patients are teenagers. I'm gonna do a separate podcast just on this, just around the, the awful things that can happen on social media, the cyber bullying We'll talk about toxic maxency later but all of that stuff that really damages young mine or can damage young minds.

Yeah so I was very careful Jumping on to it and I needed to really kind of think about what am I doing here and what's my, what's my motive and what's my, what's my message going to be. So before I, when I opened the account last year, that is the very first social media account I've ever had really, yeah, I didn't exist, literally.

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Okay, but that political leader for a living. You want to stay separate. I want to say completely separate.

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But also I needed to be careful because if I was gonna put myself out there, my patients would see it, my colleagues would see it. Yeah, and so I need, I needed to really think what am I doing here? And Very, very tight boundaries around what I what I do on social media. So it's it's not it's personally, because it's about me, but I'm not what the account is about. It's about mental health. I thought yeah, yeah so you never see me showing you pictures of my dinner.

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Like I'm not, it's a mental health, so it's not, I'm just the vehicle, it's the message.

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Yeah, so once I kind of Got that right in my head of the jump, but I did it like You're saying about young people having a lot problems on social media.

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What's your kind of view as a whole of the mental health in the UK at the moment?

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shocking yeah, yeah it's bad.

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What? Why do you reckon that is we've talked about it's obviously we're not experts. Yeah, from your point of view, what? Why is the mental health in the UK so bad?

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at the moment. That is just purely anecdotal from, say, my experience of the work that I do and this was talking to my colleagues as well. The pandemic was a whopper yeah, an absolute whopper.

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Yeah, we had a study here that we were gonna read out to you I was literally going on to.

The next part was the health foundation think tank says mental illness has increased more than 400% among 16 to 34 year olds over the last 10 years. We were looking at the NHS direct figures last week on our podcast and it showed the sharp increase in mental illness in all age Groups since the pandemic and we're blown away to see a 23% increase for 25 to 39 year olds. And that was gonna lead on to question why has there been such a awful increase since pandemic? What's your view there? More just like social anxiety type thing or is it not even to know?

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we saw, because of my again the demographic I work with Tom massive increase in self-harming and eating disorders.

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Yeah, eating disorders. Yeah, what type of things are like. Is that, um, not anxiety? That's anorexia and Believe me, I'm a predominantly anorexia.

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So I don't know if you know much about eating disorders, but eating disorders isn't. It becomes about food. But it's not about food. It's about the relationship of food changing in order for you to be able to cope with whatever you're struggling with. So the pandemic for teenagers or for everybody was hard, but for lots of teenagers they struggled with the lack of socialization, they struggled with not seeing their friends, and young minds are fragile minds because they haven't been around long enough and they haven't developed coping mechanisms. So that's why self-harm is so high in teenagers is because it's a very easy way to get pain relief. But obviously it's not, and I've got an amazing episode on my podcast about this.

I just talked about self-harm with one of my colleagues. But what we saw is, again, like us, all, young people were struggling to cope during the pandemic and we saw a huge spike in what we would see as more kind of teenage coping mechanisms or teenage disorders. So massive rise in self-harming and a massive rise in eating disorders as well, Big rises to an anxiety and also in depression as well. So I mean, you see those all the time doing the work anyway, but certainly kind of during COVID, post-COVID, big spike up, yeah.

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Do you reckon that a big part of that is sort of being stuck inside as well?

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Oh, totally, it's not normal.

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No, we set a point. Gary Bracka I'm not sure we heard of Gary Bracka. He's like a human because of himself a buyer hacker. But he's basically works on making your body perform on its best. And he was saying, looking through studies, people are supposed to be outside from ancestral times 85% of the time and inside 15%, and at the moment we're inside 97% of the time only outside three.

And he was like it doesn't have to be 85%, but finding a right balance. That's like strikes between so you're not just inside, because you go to work undercover, your car could be in the garage, your bedroom's inside. You go to the supermarket, which is inside, you come home, you cook inside. And he was just saying, even if it's just being out and about and that's what Joe and I preach a lot it's just being outside. And Joe, you said something where you were like you don't necessarily need to do 10,000 steps a day. A lot of people don't have the time to do that. It's being outside Like if you have a 10, 15 minute break at lunch, take it, go outside, just put your phone down or just be outside. And you said that on a few episodes ago and it always kind of stuck with me is it's hard to find that balance, but I reckon the pandemic ruined that for so many more people as well, not having gardens.

If you're in a flat, what are you supposed to do? I took it for granted that we had a nice garden to go in and stuff, but a lot of people had it so much worse than what we did.

:: 19:41

It was tough. It was very, very hard. Obviously, I was working through the pandemic and I work in a medical center, so there's loads of doctors in the building, and we spent a year in our offices looking at screens, treating our patients, and for us it was just I was just it must be weird. I was just holding my neck.

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Yeah, I bet, how do you do this? Yeah?

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You know you're not trained to do that. Like your patients, come into your office and you're talking to them, but we weren't allowed we weren't even allowed to mix with each other.

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We hope you enjoyed part one of three of this episode. If you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe, and if you're listening on Spotify, apple Podcasts, wherever you are, please leave us a kind rating. It helps us more than you ever know. Here's a bit of what you can expect in part two. A lot of people, like my friends and stuff, are like yeah, I must have ADHD, I can be a heart really easily to confront a heart to regulate their emotions.