Tonight, Mark Latham was one of the first ever panellists on Karl Stefanovic‘s new show, The Verdict.
He was joined by Mamamia Editor-in-Chief Jamila Rizvi, Jacqui Lambie, former Aussie Rules footballer Campbell Brown, psychologist Sandy Rea, Deputy Director of The Sydney Institute Anne Henderson, and Dr. Anne Aly… all of whom, we are sure, were silently wishing he would leave.
While some of Latho’s cracking comments included, “It pains me to say, but in Western Sydney, there is a Muslim problem”, and “well Karl, I LOVE the Donald [Trump]!”, his incredibly ‘informed mind’ really shone during the segment on mental illness.
Latho was pretty hellbent on convincing everyone that medication for mental illness is being overprescribed and the industry is being rorted, which was swiftly denied by all the other members of panel (who all seemed to have a far better education on mental health issues than he).
“Mental illness isn’t a new thing, it’s been around forever… To say we’re over-prescribing it is not fair.” – @JamilaRizvi. #TheVerdict
— #TheVerdict (@TheVerdict9) October 8, 2015
“We have sex education, why not mental health education?” – @JacquiLambie. #TheVerdict
— #TheVerdict (@TheVerdict9) October 8, 2015
Mark put forward that anxiety was just “what the rest of us call ‘worrying’” and anti-depressants are being handed out like lollies. He also thought that psychologists could write prescriptions, and made money from doing so.
“This is where your not actually informed. Psychologists don’t write our scripts for a start!” Shots fired. #TheVerdict
— #TheVerdict (@TheVerdict9) October 8, 2015
It’s no mean feat to make Jacqui Lambie look like the sane panellist who makes valid points about mental health education (see above), but somehow Latham did.
The fact that Karl had to direct viewers to Lifeline after the segment in case people were affected (just as we will below this story) shows that mental illness is a huge issue in today’s society, and people like Mark Latham shouldn’t be trying to stigmatise sufferers even further.
During the other segments, Latham said tenfold more things that made us cringe (keep an eye to P.TV tomorrow for our official recap), then all of a sudden, it was over and Paul Hogan was doing a stand up comedy set, which possibly made everyone feel even worse.
But w/e, we agree with these Facebook users:
