Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooks Seam, and today I have Dr. Gretchen Lefevre Watson.

Dr. Gretchen Lefevre Watson is a developmental and clinical psychologist with postdoctoral

training in pediatric psychology. She has served as a professor of multiple disciplines at

universities and medical schools in the United States and abroad, and as the patient safety director

for a large health care system. She secured millions of federal dollars to study the epidemiology

of psychiatric drug use and who developed immunity-based strategies to reduce overreliance

on psychiatric labels and medicines, strategies that also improved educational

outcomes. In 2008, BMJ vetted her for a list of 100 international scientists who journalists

can count on for unbiased reviews of health research. Dr. Watson is an academic affiliate

at the University of South Carolina and the author of an

Amazon bestseller, Your Patient Safety Survival Guide, How to Protect Yourself and Others

from Medical Errors. She lives in Virginia Beach and loves to windsurf. Thank you so much for

being on the Madden and Marica podcast today. Well, thank you, Brooke. It's great to be here

and great to see you.

You know, it's interesting, Gretchen. I did not know that you were one of the 100 international

scientists who journalists can count on for unbiased reviews of health research.

You know, I want to initially take that and go a little bit into your background. I wasn't so sure we

were going to go deep into this, but after seeing that, I think it's very apropos because you

had to earn the right to say you were an unbiased reviewer after a very interesting series of

events that occurred around your ADHD research. Can you give us a little background

on the work you've done with ADHD and what happened in the late 90s and early 2000s?

...