Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up

The focus of Shrier’s book is not on those with serious mental illnesses, but rather the much larger group of people who experience fearfulness, loneliness, sadness, and other negative emotions. She was aghast when she took her son to an urgent care for a lingering stomachache. Although he had exhibited no signs of mental illness, she was asked to leave the room for him to be screened with questions about suicidal tendencies. The survey questions were developed by a federal governmental agency. In her view, parents are too accommodating to mental health experts.

This generation of parents, Generation X, are over-compensating for their own parents, who kept healthy children away from psychologists. As a child, her feelings were not consulted, and she was spanked. Guided by experts, she and others of her generation bought into a therapeutic approach to parenting. Instead of spankings, children were given timeouts with an explanation of their punishment. “An ideal childhood meant no pain, no discomfort, no fights, no failure – and absolutely no hint of ‘trauma’” (xvi). To ensure this, parents closely monitored their children’s feelings. When those were problematic, the parents consulted experts who tested, diagnosed, counseled, and/or medicated. Thus, for example, shyness became a social anxiety