Abigail Shrier: Why the Kids Aren’t Alright
Investigative journalist Abigail Shrier discusses how the overwhelming embrace of therapy might be harming the next generation. She challenges conventional wisdom on mental health, exploring practices that foster resilience and independence in children and adults.
Deep Dive Analysis
20 Topic Outline
Defining Bad Therapy and Its Impact on Youth
How Current Practices Dysregulate Children
Societal Shifts Leading to Over-Reliance on Experts
Therapists' Influence on Parenting and School Practices
The Importance of Parental Authority and Parenting Styles
Critique of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in Schools
Parental Confidence and the Role of the Mental Health Industry
Risks of Universal Mental Health Screeners and Suicide Normalization
The Dangers of Over-Therapy for Bereavement and Other Issues
Therapy's Impact on Children's Agency and Development
Technology and Social Media's Role in Mental Health Decline
Conflict of Interest: Schools' Role in Mental Health Diagnoses
COVID-19's Acceleration of Mental Health Challenges
Abigail Shrier's Experience with Public Criticism and 'Cancellation'
The State of Prestige Media and Conspiracy Theories
Parental Strategies for Fostering Resilience and Independence
Addressing Conflicting Messages from Home and School
The Silent Majority and Intimidation in Education
Consequences of Preventing Adulthood and Learned Helplessness
Defining Successful Parenting
6 Key Concepts
Bad Therapy
Bad therapy is defined as any therapeutic intervention that introduces new symptoms or makes existing symptoms worse. This often occurs by over-emphasizing feelings, making happiness a primary goal, and teaching individuals to never ignore distress, leading to dysregulation.
Dysregulated Behavior
Dysregulated behavior refers to an inability to control one's emotions, leading to inappropriate responses to situations. Examples include high school and university students throwing tantrums or complaining to HR over minor workplace disappointments, expecting everything to stop for them.
Authoritative Parenting
This parenting style, identified by Diana Baumrind, involves parents being in charge, setting rules, and administering discipline when necessary, while also being loving, caring, and sympathetic. Research consistently shows that authoritative parenting produces the best outcomes for children's success, emotional well-being, and eventual closeness with parents.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
SEL is a school-based project designed to teach emotional regulation, often using therapeutic interventions rather than moral language or character development. In practice, it can lead to dysregulation by constantly asking kids to check on and ruminate about their negative emotions, resembling group therapy.
Iatrogenic Effects of Therapy
These are harms introduced by the healer or treatment itself. Research indicates that therapy can sometimes make conditions worse, such as in cases of natural bereavement, breast cancer anxiety, or leading to alienation from spouses or parents, often by encouraging rumination on negative feelings.
Treatment Dependency
Treatment dependency is a common side effect of prolonged therapy, especially in children, where individuals become reliant on a therapist for guidance on normal life transitions and decisions. This undermines their agency and ability to navigate adulthood independently.
9 Questions Answered
Mentally unstable children are often dysregulated, unable to control their emotions, obsess over their feelings, view themselves as unique and isolated, receive diagnoses for ordinary behaviors, and focus excessively on happiness and wellness.
Parents, having lived through societal changes like high divorce rates, became unconfident in their ability to raise children and turned to experts. The mental health industry then promoted ideas like pervasive trauma and technical child-rearing, undermining parental authority.
Authoritative parenting, where parents are loving but also clearly in charge, set rules, and enforce boundaries, consistently produces the best outcomes for children's success, emotional well-being, and strong family relationships.
SEL, by constantly prompting children to check on and ruminate about their negative emotions, can lead to dysregulation, increased anxiety and depression, and alienation from parents, rather than teaching genuine emotional resilience.
Unnecessary therapy can undermine parental authority, create treatment dependency, stigmatize children with diagnoses they don't need, and encourage rumination on minor issues, potentially turning normal experiences into perceived traumas.
Social media acts as an accelerant for deteriorating mental health, encouraging self-diagnosis and spreading mental health contagions. However, it's not the sole cause, as issues existed before widespread social media use among very young children.
Schools are incentivized to identify mental health issues to secure more resources and accommodations, which can lead to over-diagnosis and excusing children from challenges rather than helping them overcome them. School counselors also face ethical prohibitions due to dual relationships with students.
The lockdowns and isolation during COVID-19 were detrimental to children's mental health, a foreseeable outcome that mental health organizations largely failed to protest. These organizations now often present themselves as the solution to problems they did not prevent.
If current trends continue, children will be prevented from becoming fully functioning adults. They will feel unwell and incapable, lacking the strength and responsibility to support others, hold jobs, raise families, and contribute to society.
21 Actionable Insights
1. Parents Must Be In Charge
Establish parental authority and set clear rules, as this is crucial for children’s mental health, stability, and overall success in life. Kids need their parents in charge for their mental health, stability, and success.
2. Foster Resilience, Not Fragility
Teach children to tolerate distress and pain, allowing them to experience and overcome minor adversities and social slights rather than constantly shielding them. We are born with the ability to overcome adversity, and telling kids they are traumatized by normal challenges is the worst thing to do.
3. Educate Emotions, Don’t Affirm All
Guide children in understanding and managing their emotions, rather than affirming every feeling, especially extreme or dysregulated ones. Kids are still figuring out which of their emotions make sense, and parents need to educate them on what is appropriate.
4. Avoid Feelings Obsession
Do not constantly ask children how they are feeling or encourage rumination on negative emotions, as this broadcasts that feelings are the most important guide and can lead to dysregulation. Constantly asking children how they’re feeling or if they’re happy makes happiness a goal, which leads to unhappiness.
5. Cultivate Responsibility & Impact
Teach children that their actions affect others and that they have responsibilities, fostering a sense of citizenship and connection beyond themselves. Never give them a sense that their actions have no effect on others, or they will have no responsibility to be a good citizen.
6. Don’t Pathologize Normal Behavior
Avoid giving diagnoses for ordinary behaviors or treating children as disordered, as this removes their agency and can make them believe they have inherent problems. Pathologizing ordinary behaviors treats children to see themselves as disordered, making them feel they have no agency to change.
7. Prioritize Good Life, Not Preventive Therapy
Focus on providing children with connection, community involvement, exercise, healthy eating, and in-person relationships, as these are proven well-being factors, unlike unproven preventive therapy. There is no good study showing preventive mental health works, but a good life with connection and community is essential for well-being.
8. Limit Screen Time & Provide Structure
Offer children a structured environment and limit constant stimulation from devices like iPads, which helps improve their attention span and ability to concentrate on less exciting tasks. Kids need structure and should not be constantly titillated by devices, which makes it harder for them to concentrate in school.
9. Valorize Grit and Agency
Emphasize the importance of grit, putting emotions aside to get on with life, and taking agency in overcoming difficult situations to build character and capability. We should valorize putting emotions to one side and getting on with life, and making a turnaround even after something hard.
10. Teach Family History of Overcoming
Share stories of family members overcoming adversity to instill pride and belief in children’s own capacity to handle tough challenges. Tell children about what their ancestors went through and overcame, so they feel proud and believe they can overcome tough things too.
11. Set High Expectations
Hold children to high standards and expectations, as this communicates faith in their capabilities and capacity to achieve great things. High expectations honor children with the sense that they have capacity and capability, conveying belief in them.
12. Give Chores and Independence
Assign children chores and allow them more independence, including slightly risky activities, to foster a sense of mattering, capability, and self-reliance. Give kids chores and more independence so they feel they matter in the world and are benefiting the family.
13. Be Cautious with Diagnoses & Medication
Exercise caution before introducing diagnoses and medication for children’s behavioral issues, first attempting environmental adjustments to avoid conveying a message of incapability. Introducing a diagnosis and a pill can make a child feel they can’t do things on their own and have a brain problem.
14. Frame Behavior as Choice
Address children’s behavioral issues as choices or responsibilities they can change, rather than attributing them to a ‘brain problem,’ which can foster learned helplessness. Telling a child they were lazy or irresponsible empowers them to make a decision to change, unlike telling them they have a brain problem.
15. Question Therapy’s Necessity & Goals
If therapy is considered for a child, ensure there’s a real need, establish clear goals, and aim for an eventual exit to prevent dependency and potential undermining of parental authority. Therapy should be confined to a specific problem with a clear goal, not a permanent situation that interferes with the parent-child relationship.
16. Objectively Evaluate Therapy’s Effectiveness
For adults and children in therapy, objectively assess its effectiveness beyond just feeling better after sessions, as subjective feelings may not align with actual progress, and therapy can sometimes be harmful. People often feel purged after therapy and think it’s helping, even when objective markers show they are doing no better or worse.
17. Avoid Normalizing Suicide
Do not normalize, valorize, or repetitively mention suicide as a coping mechanism with children, as this can inadvertently increase its prevalence. Normalizing suicide, presenting it as a coping means, or valorizing mental health struggles can increase suicide in the population.
18. Counter School Mental Health Messages
Inform children that constant rumination on feelings or certain school mental health surveys can be unhelpful, and that mental health is a byproduct of living a good life, not something to constantly ‘work on.’ Parents should feel free to tell kids their own views on school mental health practices, such as regarding them as ’nonsense’ and that mental health happens while living a good life.
19. Encourage Facing Social Challenges
Encourage children to face social challenges and minor embarrassments directly, rather than cowering or seeking immediate adult intervention, to build coping skills for future life criticisms. Allowing children to deal with being made fun of by their group helps them learn to handle criticism and disappointment later in life.
20. Don’t Make Happiness the Goal
Avoid making happiness the ultimate goal in life, as constantly striving for it can paradoxically lead to unhappiness and an inability to tolerate normal life frustrations. Making happiness your goal is a way to make you unhappy, because most of life involves work, frustration, and worries.
21. Raise Productive, Value-Driven Citizens
Define successful parenting as raising productive, reliable adults who embody your values, contribute to society, and are capable of forming strong relationships and families. A successful parent raises a good child to adulthood who is a productive citizen, embodies their values, is reliable, and wants to build community and family.
6 Key Quotes
If we wanted to make kids dysregulated, here's what we would do. We would obsess over their emotions. We would ask them constantly how they were feeling about things. We would ask them to pay attention to their feelings. So therefore broadcast that their feelings were an important and reliable guide to whether, how they were doing in life.
Abigail Shrier
Making happiness your goal is a way to make you unhappy because most of life, we're not exactly happy, right? We're thinking about the work we have, we're, we're frustrated. We have a worry that's bothering us. Maybe we have an itch or an allergy or a slight pain that we have to repress to get on with the business of our lives.
Abigail Shrier
The people who love me the most are the ones in charge, not the therapist my mom hired, not the pediatrician who's bossing my mom around my, my mom or dad, or whoever the parent is. They are in charge. The people who love me most know what's best for me. That basic idea is something kids need.
Abigail Shrier
Your homework doesn't care how you feel about it. It needs to be done.
Shane Parrish (recounting a teacher's quote)
Mental health is not something you work on. It's something that happens while you're living a good life.
Abigail Shrier
A successful parent is someone who's raised a good child to adulthood, to good adulthood. Someone who has raised a productive citizen who, by the way, has your values, passing on your values to your kid.
Abigail Shrier
3 Protocols
Raising Resilient Children
Abigail Shrier- Give children chores and more independence to foster a sense of mattering and contribution to the family.
- Allow children to engage in slightly risky activities (e.g., using sharp knives, cooking, navigating the neighborhood) to develop self-reliance and problem-solving skills.
- Control parental anxiety and avoid constantly checking on children's feelings when no problem is indicated.
- Have frank conversations with children, telling them they are fine and can overcome challenges, thereby triaging actual big problems from minor hurts.
- Encourage children to put their feelings aside and focus on outward activities like community involvement, exercise, and building real-life relationships.
Dealing with Negative Social Media Comments
Shane Parrish- Show children examples of negative comments directed at you (e.g., on YouTube videos).
- Explain that people who are doing significant work or struggling in the 'arena' do not typically make such comments.
- Emphasize that those who try to pull others down should be ignored, as listening to them would prevent one from pursuing their goals.
- Teach children that they can survive criticism and humiliation, and to 'just keep going'.
Navigating Conflicting Messages from School and Home
Abigail Shrier- Feel free to tell children your own opinions about school-based mental health initiatives, even if they differ from the school's message.
- Instruct children to be respectful and polite during school mental health exercises, but internally disregard them as 'nonsense'.
- Explain that constantly thinking about feelings can make normal people sad, and that mental health is a byproduct of living a good life, not something to be constantly 'worked on'.
- Reinforce that parents know what's best for their children, especially when school messages might undermine this.