Episode
The impact of disclosure: John Priestland, Dr. Martin Abbas on psychology of contact | Reality Check
- Published
- Jun 23, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3074
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Summary
In this episode of "Reality Check," Ross Coulthart sits down with John Priestland and Dr. Martin Abbas of uNHIdden, the U.K. and U.S. foundation behind the first systematic public health framework for a disclosure event. Their report, "Preparing for Disclosure: A Public Health Framework for Paradigm-shifting Revelations," was published in June 2026. You can read it in full here:https://www.unhidden.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/uNHIdden-Preparedness-Plan-Final-1.pdf The premise is almost entirely unexamined. Governments plan for pandemics, natural disasters and mass-casualty events, but nothing in any national framework prepares ordinary people for the psychological and social fallout of learning that humanity is not alone. UNHIdden takes no position on whether confirmatory information sits inside a classified program. Their case rests on the precautionary principle: the potential scale of the public response is large, the preparedness gap is real and the cost of preparing for an event that may never come is modest next to the cost of being unprepared. The report borrows tools from pandemic preparedness, disaster mental health and crisis communication. Ross and his guests work through that framework. They define ontological shock, the disorientation a person feels when the ground assumptions of their reality give way, and trace why the mental health toll of a societal trauma so often outlasts the physical one. The conversation covers the institutional history that built the stigma, including the Robertson Panel and the decision to make ridicule a matter of policy and the lasting damage institutional betrayal does once a public learns it was misled. Dr. Abbas, a practicing GP, describes what it is like to sit across from an experiencer whose first w…