Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has been recently making his return to the spotlight, following a tragic year of fighting multiple health issues. As a result of his upcoming book, he has been the subject of a number of interviews and some are seemingly more fair than others. TheTimes has released one such interview with Dr. Peterson in which the interviewer falsely claimed he has Schizophrenia. He does not.
Titled "Jordan Peterson on his depression, drug dependency and Russian rehab hell," the Times has gone out of its way to paint an inaccurate picture of Dr. Peterson and his family. Mikhaila Peterson was also interviewed by the Times. She told The Post Millennial that "we were misrepresented in a very disturbing way and that's causing serious stress to our family."
As a result of The Times article, a number of other media outlets have reported on the story of Dr. Peterson having Schizophrenia. Such outlets include the New York Post and the Daily Mail. In these cases however, the outlets are likely not reporting on the story with any malice. The source of the misrepresentation comes from the original Times article.
The context of the interview surrounds Dr. Peterson's year long hiatus. Following his wife's Kidney Cancer diagnosis, Dr. Peterson had a paradoxical reaction to benzodiazepines. This subsequently led to akathisia, a condition in which one is unable to stop moving. Western medicine had seemingly failed Dr. Peterson and his daughter opted to fly him to Russia, where he went into an induced coma. The recovery started then.
Dr. Peterson still faces challenges regarding his recovery but is slowly beginning to regain his health and move on. He is now in the process of promoting his new book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.
As a result of the misleading article, Dr. Peterson has published a full audio recording of the interview with The Times writer Decca Aitkenhead.
Stretching to almost three hours long, the interview is filled with nuance and details that were left out of the Times piece. Most prominently, the piece claims Dr. Peterson was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and the writer even opines that "after 80 minutes on Zoom, the one thing of which I'm certain is that, were I as close to death as she assures me her father repeatedly was, this is not the person I would entrust with saving my life."
One such Twitter user named Rob Henderson, points out parts of the interview transcript, which are inaccurate.
Dr. Peterson does not have Schizophrenia. His symptoms were later found to be a side effect of medication. Based off the unedited recording, the framing of the piece is clearly misleading.
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