In “Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up,” Abigail Shrier contends that the current mental health crisis among Generation Z is not a result of insufficient therapeutic intervention, but rather a consequence of excessive and misguided treatment by mental health professionals. Secondarily, she argues poor parenting is also to blame for the mental health issues suffered by Gen Z.
Shrier writes:
“How did the first generation to raise kids without spanking produce the first generation to declare they never wanted kids of their own? How did kids raised so gently come to believe they had experienced debilitating childhood trauma? How did kids who received far more psychotherapy than any previous generation plunge into a bottomless well of despair?”
She continues:
“With the charisma of cult leaders, therapeutic experts convinced millions of parents’ to see their children as challenged. They infused parenting with self-consciousness and fevered insecurity. They conscripted teachers into a therapeutic order of education, which meant treating every child as emotionally damaged. They pushed pediatricians to ask kids as young as eight – who had presented with nothing more than a stomachache – whether they felt their parents’ might be better off without them. In the face of experts’ implacable self-assurance, schools were eager; pediatricians, willing; and parents, unresisting. Maybe it’s time we offered a little resistance.”
“Healers Can Harm”
Shrier posits that therapy, while potentially beneficial in some cases, can also be detrimental. She argues that it can stifle the development of natural resilience and coping mechanisms, and highlights research suggesting that therapy may actively cause harm in a significant minority of cases (approximately 20%). Shrier challenges the perceived efficacy of psychotherapy, contending that its benefits are often overstated and that it can lead to a culture of dependency and victimhood.
“Therapy,” she writes, “can hijack our normal processes of resilience, interrupting our psyche’s ability to heal itself, in its own way, at its own time.”
What’s Wrong?
Furthermore, Shrier criticizes the over-diagnosis and over-medication of children and adolescents, arguing that mental health professionals are too quick to label normal developmental challenges and emotional fluctuations as pathological conditions requiring medication. She contends that this trend has been fueled by a combination of factors, including the expansion of diagnostic criteria, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, and a societal tendency to medicalize normal human experiences.
Shrier asks: “How would a malevolent mastermind induct a generation into a tyranny of feelings?” She concludes there are 10 things you can do to damage people’s mental health:
- Teach kids to pay attention to their feelings
- Induce ruminations
- Make “happiness” the goal
- Affirm and accommodate worries
- Over monitor
- Dispense diagnosis liberally
- Drug kids with medication
- Encourage kids to share their trauma
- Break contact with “toxic” family
- Create treatment dependency
Schools
Shrier also points to the role of schools in exacerbating the mental health crisis. She argues that schools often promote a culture of victimhood, encouraging children to focus on their feelings and perceived traumas rather than developing resilience and coping skills. She challenges the notion that trauma is indelibly stored in the body, emphasizing the malleability of memory, particularly in young children, and the potential for therapeutic interventions to inadvertently reinforce and solidify negative experiences.
Additional Advice
Scattered throughout her book, Shrier says the following advice will help parents improve the mental health of Gen Z.
- Discipline works on children and young adults.
- “We assumed with perfect faith (and wholly without evidence) that gentler parenting could only produce thriving children. Shouldn’t flowers bloom in powdered sugar? Turns out, they grow best in dirt.”
- She discourages medications. ADHD, for example, does not meet the definition of disorder and stimulants are more harmful than helpful. Similarly, anxiety and depression don’t necessarily need medication – in fact modest levels are healthy and part of development.
- Kids are tough, but they will become weak if parents make them weak by helicopter parenting and failing to tell them “no” frequently. Providing them with excuses and always intervening is a quick way to turn children into snowflakes.
- Kids need independence – let them fail and succeed on their own.
Shrier Concludes…
In contrast to the prevailing narrative that encourages reliance on mental health experts, Shrier advocates for a more hands-off approach to parenting. She offers practical advice to parents, including limiting exposure to technology, avoiding overprotective tendencies, and fostering independence and self-reliance in their children. Shrier encourages parents to trust their instincts and to raise their children without undue reliance on the advice of mental health professionals, whom she believes often overstep their boundaries and contribute to the infantilization of young people.
If you enjoy this review, check out our summary of The Anxious Generation. You can find more books on the Bookshelf. Click to purchase Bad Therapy.