Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Investigation Groundbreaking A Abigail Shrier, author of the bestseller TIMES YORK NEW the of Damage Irreversible, has launcheda groundbreakinginvestigation into how the health industry actually might be harming rather than healing children in America.
The investigation launched has Shrier Abigail into how the industry’s mental healthmight be harming rather than helpingAmerican healing children. Through her years of meticulous research and writing, she discovered something deeply troubling: by virtually every metric measured, Gen Z mental health appears worse than previous generations.
Troubling The Statistics
- Suicide rates among youth keep climbing after the year
- Children’s prescriptions antidepressant written for antidepressants have disturbingly become common
- Mental rapid proliferation of health diagnoses has helped a staggering numberof kids
- Now, children themselves describe themselves as sad, lonely, lost, and fearful the growing challenges of up
Bad therapy: why kids aren’t growing up. Something has gone wrong with how America approaches youth mental wellness, and Shrier’s investigation reveals why. During the time between her last book and this publication, Shrier spoke with hundreds of American parents and became acutely aware of how much therapy kids are getting.
The School System Problem:
- Often not from actual therapists but from proxies in schools
- These proxies have completely replaced parents as the primary support system
- Many families are now relying on therapists and therapeutic methods to fix their kids
- Expert diagnoses have altered how kids view their perceptions of themselves
A Voice for Concerned Parents
This controversial book positions Shrier as an important voice in the parenting discourse, offering a book designed to help parents understand the nuances of mental health experts and why they should be wary before they send their kids down this path.
The Fundamental Challenge:
- The book challenges fundamental values that parents hold dear
- Every parent wants the best for their kids
- All parents hope to build their confidence and resilience
- Yet Shrier’s research suggests our current approach may be achieving the opposite of what caring parents intend
- Creating a generation more fragile and dependent than ever before
The Devastating Numbers
The numbers tell a troubling story that reveals the depth of this crisis of bad therapy: why kids aren’t Growing Up :
- Youth suicide rates continue their relentless climb year after year
- Antidepressant prescriptions written for children have reached disturbingly common levels nationwide
- The rapid proliferation of mental health diagnoses has helped generate a staggering number of kids requiring treatment
- An entire generation now describes themselves as chronically lonely, lost, sad, and fearful about the normal challenges of growing up
What Shrier’s Research Uncovered
Something fundamental has gone wrong with how America approaches youth mental wellness, and Shrier’s comprehensive investigation reveals the shocking why behind this epidemic.
The Core Problem: How Mental Health Experts Create More Patients Than They Cure
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Bestselling investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the real problem with kids today isn’t what mental health experts claim it to be. In her controversial work, Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up, she presents compelling evidence that the mental health industry actively refuses to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: the exponential growth in their services isn’t solving anything. Instead of recognizing this reality, the industry continues feeding normal kids with normal problems into what she describes as an unending pipeline designed for minting patients much faster than finding any real cure.
What makes this analysis particularly striking is how Shrier, with no exception, challenges the fundamental prospects that drive today’s therapeutic culture. Having observed countless families navigate these waters, I’ve witnessed firsthand how the system transforms everyday childhood struggles into pathological conditions requiring professional intervention. The mental health experts have created a self-perpetuating cycle where normal kids experiencing typical developmental challenges are systematically converted into lifelong patients, ensuring the industry‘s continued expansion rather than focusing on genuine healing and resilience-building.
Research Methodology: How Shrier Uncovered the Truth
Comprehensive Interview Process
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Drawing from hundreds of in-depth interviews with child psychologists, concerned parents, dedicated teachers, and young people themselves, Shrier methodically explores the ways our mental health industry has fundamentally transformed how we approach childhood development. Her research methodology wasn’t confined to academic studies or theoretical frameworks – instead, she went directly to the source, spending countless hours listening to real families navigate this complex landscape.
Key Sources and Methods
- Child psychologists – providing professional insights into industry changes
- Parents – sharing real experiences with therapeutic ways of raising kids
- Teachers – witnessing how schools now teach and discipline differently
- Young people – revealing how they talk about their own experiences
Transformative Discoveries
Through these conversations, she began to uncover how the industry has systematically changed the way we teach, treat, discipline, and talk to kids in both educational and therapeutic settings. What struck me most about Shrier’s approach is how she gave equal weight to voices often overlooked in mental health discussions – the teachers who witness daily classroom dynamics, the parents struggling to understand new therapeutic paradigms, and most importantly, the young people who are living through these interventions firsthand.
Impact on Traditional Practices
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. By conducting these comprehensive interviews, she was able to map out exactly how traditional child-rearing practices have been replaced by therapeutic language and methods. Her investigation reveals that we’ve transformed not just how we treat struggling kids, but how we talk to all children about their emotions, challenges, and normal developmental struggles, creating a generation that views ordinary life experiences through a clinical lens.
The Mental Health Crisis by the Numbers: A Generation in Decline
Alarming Trends Across All Metrics
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. By virtually every metric measured, Gen Z mental health appears significantly worse than previous generations. Youth suicide rates continue climbing to record highs, antidepressant prescriptions written for children have grown disturbingly common across the nation, and the rapid proliferation of mental health diagnoses has helped generate a staggering number of kids who consistently describe feeling lonely, lost, sad, and fearful as they navigate the process of growing up. The mental health establishment has successfully sold this generation the idea that vast numbers of them are fundamentally sick, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s reshaping how young people view themselves.
Treatment Statistics That Tell a Troubling Story
Less than half of Gen Zers believe their mental health is good, while this rising generation has received more therapy than any prior generation in history. Nearly 40 percent of the rising generation has undergone some type of treatment with a mental health professional, which stands in stark contrast when compared to only 26 percent of Gen Xers who had similar experiences at the same age. Even more concerning, forty-two percent of the rising generation currently holds a mental health diagnosis, effectively rendering what was once considered normal as increasingly abnormal.
The Youngest Victims: Children in Crisis
- One in six US children aged two to eight years old is now diagnosed with a mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder
- More than 10 percent of American kids carry an ADHD diagnosis – nearly double the expected prevalence rate based on population surveys from other countries
- Nearly 10 percent of kids are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder
These numbers reveal how we’ve transformed childhood itself, turning typical developmental challenges into pathological conditions requiring professional intervention.
Key Findings & Harmful Practices
The Dark Side of Popular Therapeutic Methods
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Shrier’s investigation reveals that many widely accepted therapeutic approaches carry serious side effects without proven benefits, leading to some deeply unsettling findings. Talk therapy, for instance, can induce excessive rumination, effectively trapping children in destructive cycles of anxiety and depression rather than helping them break free. Meanwhile, Social Emotional Learning programs, now standard in both public and private schools, often handicap the most vulnerable children by teaching them to focus obsessively on their feelings rather than developing practical coping skills.
Parenting Approaches That Create More Problems
- Gentle parenting methods frequently encourage emotional turbulence instead of teaching emotional regulation
- Children learn to lash out when frustrated, leaving desperate adults struggling to maintain control of the household
- Mental health interventions implemented on behalf of kids have largely backfired, creating dependency rather than resilience
The Professional Transformation of Childhood Struggles
Recasting normal personality variation as pathological dysfunction has become standard practice among mental health experts. What was once seen as the natural chiaroscuro of human development – the light and shadow of growing up – is now systematically pathologized. Children are being trained by well-meaning professionals to regard themselves as fundamentally disordered, turning typical childhood challenges into lifelong identities that require continuous professional management.
The Educational System’s Transformation
The Great Institutional Shift
Schools have eagerly jumped at every opportunity to adopt therapeutic approaches, having officially announced themselves as partners in modern child-rearing. Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Kids’ therapeutic management at school represents a fundamental departure from traditional educational roles, where mental health staff have dramatically expanded. What I’ve observed is how school therapy for kids has completely directed management, moving away from character development toward emotional accommodation.
The New Educational Framework
- Routinized habits of monitoring and sharing bad feelings have become standard classroom practice
- Teachers are extensively trained to understand trauma as the root cause of student misbehavior
- Academic underperformance is now viewed primarily through a therapeutic lens rather than as a learning challenge
The transformation is so complete that many educators now see themselves as mental health providers first and teachers second. Students are encouraged to externalize their struggles rather than develop internal resilience, creating a generation that views normal academic and social challenges as symptoms requiring professional intervention. This institutional change has fundamentally altered the school environment from a place of growth and challenge to one of accommodation and therapeutic intervention.
The Surveillance Generation: How Constant Watching Creates Chronic Stress
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Kids today find themselves in a unique situation where there’s always an observer present, according to Peter Gray, professor of psychology at Boston College and author of the classic introductory textbook on psychology. Whether at home with parents watching or at school being observed by teachers, children live under constant adult-directed activities with virtually no privacy. Gray’s research shows that adding monitoring to a child’s life is functionally equivalent to adding anxiety, as psychologists have found through research that when you add any element of surveillance, you automatically stress the system.
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. To compare this effect, imagine people doing something under normal stress versus the same activity where you add additional stress by simply having an observer present – Gray notes that being watched by somebody assessing your performance creates a stress condition that the last generation never experienced. We came to think that unsupervised time was dangerous, potentially exposing children to various threats like childhood trauma, bullying, or abuse. Better to have structured recess with adults who monitor and establish clear rules for schoolyard kickball, insist everyone play fairly, and ensure no kid feels left out.
Better to hire bus monitors to reduce the risk of a kid taking another’s lunch money, and Better for parents to track teens’ whereabouts through an app rather than wonder if they can trust them to get home safely. This incessant monitoring has completely infested modern childhood with stress, creating a generation that can’t function without external oversight.
The Surveillance Generation: When Watching Becomes Wounding
The Psychology of Perpetual Observation
Kids today face an unprecedented situation where there’s always an observer analyzing their every move, notes Peter Gray, professor of psychology at Boston College and author of the classic introductory textbook on psychology. Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Whether at home with parents watching their behavior or at school being constantly observed by teachers, children exist within adult-directed activities that strip away any sense of privacy. Gray’s groundbreaking research demonstrates that adding monitoring to a child’s life is functionally equivalent to adding anxiety – psychologists have consistently found that when you add any element of surveillance, you automatically introduce stress into the system.
The Stress Multiplication Effect
- When you compare people doing something under normal stress versus the same activity with added stress from simply having an observer present, the difference is dramatic
- Gray explains that being watched by somebody assessing your performance creates a chronic stress condition unknown to the last generation
- We came to think that unsupervised time was inherently dangerous, exposing children to childhood trauma, bullying, or abuse
The “Better Safe Than Sorry” Mentality
- Better to structure recess with adults who monitor and establish clear rules for schoolyard kickball, insist everyone play fairly, ensuring no kid feels left out
- Better to hire bus monitors to eliminate the risk of a kid taking another’s lunch money
- Better for parents to track teens’ whereabouts through an app rather than wonder if they can trust them to get home safely
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. This incessant monitoring has completely infested modern childhood with stress, creating a generation that cannot function without external oversight and validation.
The Dangerous Rise of Modern Untruths
When Greg Lukianoff made his diagnosis in 2014, he was exactly right about what was happening to our youth. Many young people suddenly around 2013 embraced three great untruths that fundamentally altered how they viewed the world. They came to believe they were fragile beings who could be harmed by books, speakers, and even words – having learned to see these as dangerous forms of violence. This shift wasn’t just philosophical; it was psychological warfare against their development.
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. The second destructive belief they came to embrace was that emotions, especially anxieties, were reliable guides to reality rather than signals to be examined and managed. Instead of learning emotional regulation – a cornerstone of maturity – they were taught to trust every feeling as truth. Finally, they came to see society as comprised entirely of victims and oppressors, dividing all good people and bad people into neat categories. Both Liberals and conservatives have embraced these toxic beliefs in different ways, creating a generation that sees danger everywhere and refuses to grow beyond their emotional impulses. These shared untruths have become the foundation of a therapeutic culture that keeps children perpetually dependent and afraid.
The Core Tenets of ‘Bad’ Therapy That Harm Our Children
Emotional Over-Fixation Practices
In sum, modern Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up approaches have created a troubling framework that contradicts healthy child development. These misguided practices teach kids to pay close attention to every fleeting emotion, which tends to induce rumination rather than resilience. The current system seems to make happiness the ultimate goal while paradoxically creating a reward system for emotional suffering.
Key problematic approaches include:
- Affirm and accommodate kids’ worries instead of building coping skills
- Monitor, monitor, monitor every emotional fluctuation obsessively
- Dispense diagnoses liberally without thorough evaluation
Treatment Dependency Creation
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Therapists routinely follow harmful protocols that allow practitioners to drug children rather than addressing root causes. Perhaps most concerning, these approaches encourage kids to share supposed trauma experiences while simultaneously pushing young adults to break contact with supposedly toxic family members. The result is a system designed to create treatment dependency rather than fostering genuine healing and independence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: When should mental health care be used for children?
Mental health care can be lifesaving when properly applied, but only children with genuine severe needs require such intervention. The typical child experiencing normal struggles doesn’t need professional help, as inappropriate treatment often fails to cure and can make the situation worse by treating ordinary development as a disease.
Q: What harmful beliefs have young people adopted recently?
Starting around 2013, many young people suddenly embraced three great untruths that reshaped their perspective. They came to believe they were inherently fragile and could be harmed by mere words, that their emotions served as reliable guides to reality, and that society consisted only of victims and oppressors.
Q: What defines the problematic aspects of modern therapy?
The tenets of Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up systematically teach kids to obsessively pay close attention to their feelings, which induce rumination instead of building resilience. These methods reward emotional suffering with validation, dispense diagnoses liberally, and encourage endless sharing of trauma stories, creating treatment dependency.
Q: What expert validation supports these concerns?
Every parent should examine this research, with Elon Musk declaring it “Essential reading” for families and educators. Richard McNally, PhD, and professor at Harvard University, validates how mental health professionals frequently make things worse for kids despite their sincere aim to help.
Q: How does constant monitoring affect child development?
Today’s kids live under unprecedented surveillance that creates chronic stress and anxiety. This constant monitoring by adults has fundamentally changed childhood, preventing natural independence and resilience-building that previous generations developed through unsupervised experiences and self-directed problem-solving.
Conclusion
Bad Therapy: Why Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Modern therapeutic culture has created a dangerous paradox where efforts to help children often cause more harm than healing. Mental health care should be reserved for those with genuine severe needs, while the typical child requires guidance that builds character rather than pathologizes normal development. We must recognize that properly applied support means teaching resilience, not creating lifelong treatment dependency that prevents children from developing the inner strength necessary for independent adulthood.