Busting Viral Mental Health Myths w/Joe Nucci

The Psychology Podcast

iHeartPodcasts

Social Sciences, Science

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Scott speaks with psychotherapist and writer Joe Nucci, whose work tackles the intersection of mental health, misinformation, and pop psychology. Joe has built a large following by debunking viral myths and bringing nuance to conversations that are too often oversimplified online.

Together, they dive into his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths and the Truths to Set You Free. From the overuse of labels like “narcissist” to the assumption that mindfulness is good for everyone, Joe challenges widely accepted but misleading ideas. They also take on bigger cultural narratives—like whether everyone has trauma or whether everyone should be in therapy.

This conversation sheds light on how misinformation spreads, why it matters, and what we can do to ground our understanding of mental health in science and compassion.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:04.1	Part of the book is one of the parts.
0:06.4	It's called Social Schisms and it's mental health myths in society.
0:11.7	And a couple of the chapters I talk about how just political the field has become.
0:16.5	And how there's, you know, some people come from this school.
0:20.0	And I do my best
0:21.2	to be really objective. Like, I certainly have my opinions and personal philosophies about this.
0:26.7	And my personal opinion philosophy is that if you are going to over-prioritize systemic change,
0:31.4	you shouldn't be a therapist. You should be an activist. Like, you should go and advocate for
0:37.0	the change of laws or, you know, whatever it might be.
0:40.6	Because I believe in the individual's ability to kind of rise above to plug your book.
0:45.4	You know what I mean? It's a and to transform. But it's it seems that a lot of people will,
0:51.1	you know, take different studies or different thinkers, whether it's their
0:56.7	sound bites or an insight from their research, and then run with it as a way to conduct therapy
1:01.8	that is overly one-sided in terms of prioritizing, you know, individual autonomy versus
1:06.9	systemic change. And I think that for me, I really strive to be able to do both in my practice because
1:13.3	either route can be helpful and curative depending on the person in front of you.
1:22.8	Hello and welcome to the psychology podcast, where we explore the depths of human potential.
1:27.8	Today we have Joe Nucci on the show.
1:29.8	Joe is a psychotherapist and writer whose content contextualizes mental health misinformation,
1:35.3	pop psychology facts and fallacies, and culturally misconstrued ideas.
1:40.5	In addition to having a large Instagram following, he is author of the new book, Psychobabble,
	...

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