In an emotionally raw video update, Mikhaila Peterson told viewers that her father, psychologist Jordan Peterson, has been gravely ill for nearly a year.
“Every day for the last year has been hell,” she said. “I haven’t been posting podcasts regularly because until a few days ago, I cried every single day.” Alongside his illness, the family navigated the deaths of both of Jordan’s parents and Mikhaila’s own high-risk pregnancy — all at once.
Despite all of it, she is still leaning onto God.
“Thank God for faith,” Peterson said. “If it weren’t for my dad and our love for him…we’re closer if anything now. Otherwise, this would have just crushed us.”
What akathisia actually is
At the center of Jordan Peterson’s suffering is a condition called akathisia — a neurological injury Mikhaila describes as “the worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone go through.”
It is not mere restlessness. Akathisia produces an intolerable, unrelenting internal agitation that makes sufferers feel, in Mikhaila’s words, like they want to “crawl out of their skin.”
She described her own briefer episode as feeling like she was “falling into a volcano while being chased by a bear” — a stress response so intense it was “almost hallucinogenic.” Jordan’s symptoms, she said, have been more severe.
A neurological injury, not addiction
Mikhaila made it clear that her father has been off all psychiatric medications since January 2020. His current flare-up, which began last August, was not caused by new drugs. Mikhaila believes it was triggered by extreme stress — including the loss of both his parents — combined with mold exposure.
She is adamant that calling this an addiction is medically wrong. “He quit smoking and drinking when he was 27,” she said. “He just isn’t that.”
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Instead, she argues, he represents a common and catastrophic pattern: a patient prescribed psychiatric medications long-term for a legitimate condition — in his case, severe, treatment-resistant depression — who sustains lasting neurological damage from those drugs even years after stopping them.
The spiritual battlefield
Mikhaila believes there is more than just a physical connection to everything happening. She believes this is also a spiritual battle.
“There’s a biological basis for what’s going on with dad and we finally know what it is,” she said. “But I do think there was a spiritual element or is… I do think our family has been attacked spiritually because I cannot understand the level of suffering that I’ve been through, let alone my dad’s been through and my whole family without it making more sense through a spiritual lens. Thank God I’m a Christian.”
The hidden epidemic of psych med injury
With roughly one in six Americans currently on a psychiatric medication, Mikhaila argues that psych med injuries should be treated as a national emergency. Long-term SSRI and benzodiazepine use, she says, is now linked to mitochondrial dysfunction — damage that can manifest as a sweeping neurological injury.
Crucially, withdrawal symptoms are almost universally misdiagnosed as a relapse of the original mental illness, leading doctors to prescribe additional medications that deepen the damage. “These poor people end up on two or three more medications to stabilize their worsening mental illness when it’s really neurological damage from the medications themselves,” she said.
Pharmaceutical companies, she added, mask the severity of side effects through minimizing language — labeling akathisia merely as “may cause restlessness.”
A call to pray
Jordan Peterson has been a tremendous voice in a dark world for truth. Now is the time to pray for him. Pray specifically and boldly. Ask God for a true, miraculous healing: that every neurological wound would be restored, that the akathisia would lift completely, that Jordan would rise from this season not merely recovered but renewed, with a testimony that reaches farther than any lecture or book ever could.
Pray also for the whole Peterson family. The same God who raised Lazarus has not changed. This is the time to pray for God’s miraculous power.
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
