Phil - the show about mental health where everybody who works on it has terrible mental health because our work conditions were really bad.”Īnother former employee said the only brief reprieve they felt was during their summer hiatus from filming, but that all changed as they got ready to head back to work. You would walk into the building and there was just a palpable dread and anxiety,” one former employee said. Despite working on a TV show that purports to help improve people’s lives, 11 of the employees - all of whom asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation and retribution - say their own mental health was damaged and disrupted at the expense of working for Phil McGraw. Seven of the employees also say guests, who are often brought onto the show when they’re already in a vulnerable state, are manipulated and treated unethically. Phil has built an empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars on helping improve people’s mental health, dispensing advice to guests on his talk show in his trademark brand of snarky straight talk.īut behind the scenes, a dozen current and former employees say they experienced verbal abuse in a workplace that fosters fear, intimidation, and racism. At first, it was thought that Gypsy had been kidnapped, but when police found her with Nick, they were shocked to see she wanted to be there-and she was healthy.After rising to stardom on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the 1990s, Dr. Dee Dee was found dead days later after a series a strange Facebook messages appeared on her page that caused police to investigate.

He and Gypsy then fled to Wisconsin, where Nick lived. In 2015, when Gypsy was 23, Nick stabbed Dee Dee to death in their Springfield home. Gypsy told Nick about what her mom was doing and how she wanted to get away, and Nick was willing to murder Dee Dee to make that happen. Gypsy confided in Nick Godejohn, and they made a plan to kill Dee Dee. Late at night, when Dee Dee was asleep, she would escape online and eventually met a boyfriend on the site, Nick Godejohn. Her mom would never leave her side, and Gypsy felt she had to go along with the lies. In a 20/20 interview last year, she said she tried to escape, only to be chained to her bed. When she wouldn’t use her walking aids, Dee Dee would beat her. Gypsy discovered that her health issues were a lie, but felt she couldn’t escape her mom.Īs Gypsy got older and realized what her mother was doing, she tried to fight back. That’s when the family moved from Louisiana to Springfield, Missouri, where they stayed until Dee Dee’s murder. Habitat for Humanity provided Dee Dee and Gypsy with a house (complete with a wheelchair ramp and hot tub for Gypsy’s muscle pain) when they lost theirs during Hurricane Katrina.

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