A few months ago, a high school teacher casually told me that students diagnosed with anxiety were not participating in class at her school.
What I thought was crazy seems to be now mainstream in American schools.
In her fascinating new book, “Bad Therapy,” journalist Abigail Schrier describes how young Americans have a radically different childhood than past generations: therapy, medication, diagnosis, rampant accommodation, And it documents how teachers navigate childhoods marked by lessons that talk about trauma and emotions.
It’s no secret that Gen Z’s mental health is terrible. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans ages 10 to 24. In 2021, 9% of high school students attempted suicide.
And it’s not just a matter of young people struggling with their emotions much more than older people. Teenagers a few decades ago didn’t suffer like this. The number of suicides among Americans ages 10 to 24 has increased by more than 50% since 2000. The number of emergency room visits for young women who have self-harmed has doubled since 2001.
In “Bad Therapy,” Shrier looks at dire mental health numbers and the rise in mental health care, and proposes a provocative theory. What if the focus of our therapy culture, drugs and emotions was on harming children rather than helping them?What if the reason our mental health continues to decline is because: because Do we place as much emphasis on mental health and treatment?
All in all, I’m skeptical of this theory. In addition to the rise in mental health treatment, recent decades have seen a number of disruptive factors that can impact the mental health of young adults, from family breakdown to declining religiosity to the advent of smartphones.
Schrier himself acknowledged that correlation is not causation, writing that “it may just be a coincidence.” She added: “But it’s weird. At least it might give us a clue that a lot of treatments and a lot of helpers aren’t really helping.”
Here, “Bad Therapy” raises a variety of interesting questions. Should children see a therapist alone or with their parents? Do some treatment approaches have better evidence supporting their effectiveness than others? • How do drug treatments affect young adults’ early experiences with more mature emotions?
As someone who has benefited from both therapy and medication for my mental health (albeit as an adult), these questions seem obvious. Parents should not blindly trust therapists and doctors regarding how to treat their child. Parents should ask informed questions and seek a second opinion.
Although treatments and medications have potentially significant benefits, they also have significant drawbacks. Consider the common mistake that the mental health community makes when it comes to “affirming” a child’s new gender, rather than trying to help the child accept and appreciate his or her body.
And of course, there are various conditions for children to receive treatment. Feeling anxious about being called into class is very different from extreme suicidal thoughts. Shrier admits that she believes in health care for people who cannot live normal, productive lives without it. She warns against using the word for “worried people.” Scary stuff. I’m lonely, lost, and sad. ” But what if therapy or medication could help the “worried person”?It’s not scary at all Become People who can’t live a normal life?
“Bad Therapy” provides a particularly important revelation by showing how schools and healthcare are being affected by a focus on mental health. Just because your child is not seeing a therapist does not mean that they are not exposed to therapeutic approaches provided by teachers and other professionals who are not trained as therapists.
For example, a fifth-grade teacher in Salt Lake City, whose school practices “social and emotional learning,” often begins her lessons by asking her students to sit in a circle and talk about how they’re feeling. I did. Shrier reported that one day the teacher asked her students to name an incident that really made them sad.
One boy started talking about his father’s new girlfriend and then started crying. “He said, ‘I think my dad hates me,’ and he yells at me all the time,” the mother of another student in his class told Ms. Shrier. Other students followed suit, with one girl crying about her parents’ divorce and another expressing her concerns about her mother’s boyfriend.
“Within minutes, half the children were sobbing,” Schrier wrote. “It was time for math class. No one wanted to do it.”
How shocking!
Why did the teacher facilitate this conversation? Was there any reason to believe that this teacher was trained to help children deal with these difficult emotions in a healthy way?
Nor is this the only example of an adult authority figure having such a conversation with children without their parents present. Shria tells of the time she took her son to her pediatric emergency center because he had abdominal pain. The doctor examined her son and told them he was probably just dehydrated, then told them to wait for her nurse.
A nurse came in and asked Shrier to leave the room so she could perform a “mental health evaluation.” She said when Ms. Shrier asked to see her questions, her nurse was going to ask her son questions without her presence, such as, “During the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?” It turns out that it was. She asked, “Have you ever felt in the past few weeks that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?”
Remember: Ms. Shrier brought her son to the clinic for abdominal pain, not for a mental health evaluation. But these were questions the clinic thought it necessary to ask him without the parents present.
School counselors are another way for minors to receive mental health treatment from adults, but there is no guarantee that parents will know. Chillingly, in six states, including California and Florida, “minors over the age of 12 or 13 are legally entitled to mental health care without parental permission.” “There is,” Schur wrote. “Not only are schools not required to inform parents that their children meet regularly with school counselors; [but] It may even be forbidden to do so. ”
The current focus on prioritizing mental health may also be having a negative impact on children’s academic performance. An English teacher at a high school in Wisconsin told Schrier that he would not be allowed to lower his grade for work submitted after the deadline. One gay teacher said he believed it would be better for his music students to practice and excel rather than take time off due to their mental health. “I was dealing with my gender,” Schrier said. Identity”—this happens all the time. ”
Don’t get me wrong. Children today are not okay, as the statistics on suicide clearly show.
But “Bad Therapy” is about the current treatment and approach to struggling minors, and whether it’s the best way to put young people on the path to true mental health. It provides welcome consideration. This is way too important. And it’s the parents who truly care and love their children who should be in the driver’s seat to fix it.
Have something to say about this article? Email us if you want to turn off the sound [email protected], consider publishing edited remarks in a regular “We Hear You” feature. Be sure to include your name, city, and/or state in addition to the article URL or headline.
