Depresh Mode with John Moe

Hi, folks. John Moe here. I knew about Stephanie Wittels Wachs for quite a while before I met her but correctly figured I’d get to know her one of these days. That’s because our stories have an awful lot of overlap. We’re both writer, we both host podcasts, I live in the Twin Cities and her company, Lemonada, is based here, and most importantly, we both lost our brothers. Lost them twice, really....

No, bipolar disorder doesn’t mean that you’re kind of cheerful one day and a little bit glum the next. Those are just moods. That’s not a disorder. The Mayo Clinic says of bipolar, “When you become depressed, you may feel sad or hopeless and lose interest or pleasure in most activities. When your mood shifts to mania or hypomania (less extreme than mania), you may feel euphoric, full of energy or...

Allison Raskin has been attempting to manage her obsessive compulsive disorder for most of her life. It’s meant knowing when she can be home to take a shower during the day. It’s meant not being able to pet a friendly dog she met because even though she adores dogs, the thought of contamination was too overwhelming. She’s treated her OCD to help get the symptoms more under control but it’s a daily...

Before he was a podcast host, radio personality, or a journalist breaking major political news, Jarrett Hill was a kid growing up gay in a religiously conservative environment. So when it was time to come out, it meant defying the homophobic words of his pastor who had urged parents to not let their kids grow up to be “sissies”. He had first started seeing therapists as a result of his parents’ pr...

The American mental health care system has had some very fundamental problems for a while now: there are too few therapists, way too few psychiatrists, and it all adds up to not enough people getting the care they need. With COVID, the system needed to make some rapid changes that might go a long way to addressing the problems.  Dr. Anthony Sossong is a psychiatrist and he does a lot of work on te...

Yeah, this became a pretty big show. Just kept filling up with more guests. It started with a conversation with Zach Kornfeld of The Try Guys , a YouTube comedy troupe that is preposterously famous and beloved. Because these guys are open about their lives and challenges, we know that Zach had a bumpy ride full of mental illness diagnoses and possible trauma. Zach mentioned a talk he heard from Ir...

Peter Sagal always sounds chipper and fun on the hit NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me but that's always been just one part of his personality. In recent years, Sagal went through a divorce that resulted in his three daughters cutting off all contact with him. He spent some time coming to grips with some depression issues that he had been experiencing and largely walking away from most of his...

Look, we’re all going to be messed up for a while from COVID. Some of us a lot, some of us a little, some for a very long time, others for not as long. But it’s trauma. It’s an event more powerful than the brain can handle and that means mental health repercussions down the road. So let’s talk about what might happen. Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director of NAMI, provides insight into how trauma wo...

Author Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, has connected with a lot of people through her essays and books about the challenges of daily life, getting a lot of laughs from topics that might not appear all that funny. Jenny deals with depression and anxiety that can get pretty fierce. In her new book, Broken, she details her semi-successful TMS treatment and she explains to John Moe how odd and helpful...

Issues of depression and anxiety have been present in Open Mike Eagle's raps for a long time. His most played track on Spotify is "Ziggy Starfish (Anxiety Raps)" and it's from 2015. Mike has always been more prone to self-effacement and worry than to the boasting and swagger you might find in other hip-hop artists. But after a year that saw him lose his tv show, his touring income, his marriage, a...

Burnout is burning out of control. A lack of motivation at work. A sense that the effort you put in ultimately has no point. A feeling that all of this stuff is getting worse and you can’t do anything about it. Sound familiar? The levels of burnout among employees all over the world are soaring as we pass the year mark of the pandemic. In a global survey, 89% of people say their well being has dim...

Welcome to Depresh Mode with John Moe.  In this episode, John explains how he came to be in the unique business of having open conversations about the kinds of mental disorders that have been kept quiet for a very long time. He welcomes in Patton Oswalt, who is one of the top comedians in the country today as well as being a popular actor from films like Ratatouille and Big Fan and tv series like...

Comedian, vlogger, author and podcast host Kelsey Darragh keeps a running inventory of the mental health challenges she’s faced and continues to deal with. There are a lot. But panic disorder, depression, and anxiety tend to be her big three. And she doesn’t have them all under  control all the time because, well, that’s not how it works. But she’s found that by talking about them and writing abou...

Honest, humane, and even funny conversations about common mental disorders like depression, anxiety, addiction, OCD, PTSD and more. Hear from top artists and entertainers what it’s like to live with an interesting mind and explore big issues in mental illness with experts. No shame, no stigma, and more laughs than you might expect. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member a...