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  • Bad Therapy

  • Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up
  • By: Abigail Shrier
  • Narrated by: Abigail Shrier
  • Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (37 ratings)

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Bad Therapy

By: Abigail Shrier
Narrated by: Abigail Shrier
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Publisher's Summary

In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z's mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not stopped the trend. What has gone wrong with our youth?

In Bad Therapy, bestselling investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the problem isn't the kids - it's the mental health experts. Mental health care can be lifesaving when properly applied, but that is not what's happening. Instead, children experiencing the normal pangs of adolescence and their anxious parents are seeking answers from therapists, who are only too happy to explore what might be wrong - and to make money doing so. No industry seems to turn away from the possibility of exponential growth, and our mental health industry is no exception. It asks children, again and again: How do you feel? Are you sure? By treating the well, it is making them sick, feeding normal kids with normal problems into the mental healthcare pipeline. It is minting patients faster than it can cure them.

Drawing on extensive research and interviews with doctors, parents, therapists and young people, Shrier enumerates the dangerous side effects of unnecessary or poorly executed mental health care. With clear eyes and compassion, she examines ways worried parents who think they must indulge their child's every feeling make matters worse, and she offers liberating advice for raising emotionally resilient and independent children.

Packed with relatable stories, devastating insights, and common-sense conclusions, Bad Therapy is a must-listen for anyone concerned about protecting the next generation.

©2024 Abigail Shrier (P)2024 Swift Press Audio

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gives you a good prespective on 'over' therapy

This book was recommended by my husband, who listened one of to the Joe Rogan podcast. He wanted me to know that he was anti therapy, and sometimes our kids just needs some tough love and 'get over it'. If you want a book that gives you another perspective of parenting, the 'less parenting' way, then this book is for you.
i still believe in therapy, but now have a more clearer expectation of it for myself and children.

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Gentle Parenting is out

Fantastic book, so insightful. Raising kids to be respectful fuctioning humans doesn't feel so helpless now

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Every parent should read this!

The author wades into the sacrosanct pond of therapy and reveals that it is indeed for the most part a toxic swamp. An incredibly well researched, well written deep dive into why we should leave our kids alone!

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Reality

Very well researched and written book that everyone should read. Im not even a parent, but the value in this book goes well beyond parenting. It puts together and explains why people (particularly of a younger generation) are the way they are, how in a matter of only a generation we've had such a stark change in human development/behavior and why society is going down the drain hole. A must read for anyone who thinks we could be heading in the wrong direction

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Half truths and general misrepresentations

From the Jordan Peterson school of half truths and misperceptions disguised as scientific debate.
Shrier is on the right track with many of the theories she raises, such as the over-pathologising of regular human emotions as mental illness. There can be little disagreement with her assertion about the erroneous rise in the use of therapy speak - not every adverse experience is “trauma”. She is not wrong when she talks of the harm that can be wrought by inappropriate trauma therapy. She is mostly right about the impact of smart phones and social media. The rise in diagnosis of many mental health conditions is indeed concerning and necessitating of more rigourous investigation. However, as is becoming all too prevalent in modern discourse, she is hiding far more extreme opinions that she mixes in with it all making it hard to pull apart. It would be so easy to be so busy nodding along that you don’t notice the deliberate falsehoods. At best she is the parent that tries to hide vegetables in a kid’s meal by chopping them up really small and hoping they don’t notice them in with the tomato sauce, but at worst she is a opportunistic grifter peddling even great division between parents and teens.
For the first few chapters I was alternating between “yeah, kinda” to “nah, that’s not really true, but I see how you got there”, but then her true intent became clear when she not once, but twice wilfully mispronounced Greta Thunberg’s name as Greta Toonbury. This was then followed by her, probably figured that those still listening were now converts, implied a direct causal link between “left leaning liberal politics” and mental illness. The lack of self awareness and/or shame to do that straight after deriding links between grief and adverse mental heath responses is breathtaking.
She went on to mock those that take a harm minimisation approach to social media likening it to a drug counsellor telling teens how to take ecstasy safely - but that is exactly what we do, because harm minimisation is supported by the evidence. Instead she trots out the false belief that harm minimisation equates to endorsement.

It is such a shame as a moderated version of much of this, that didn’t so maliciously pander to the already fearful would be welcome.
What really smells though is Shrier decrying anxiety as being socialised, while at the same time actively seeking to generate that same anxiety in her (and my) Gen X cohort - the only difference is that we are meant to present our fears as knowing wisdom while laughing at the kids.

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