Bad Therapy: A review of the reviews
Abigail Shrier, author of a previous highly controversial book about transgender issues, has just published Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up. In it she argues that mental health experts aren’t the cure for the mental health crisis but a big part of the problem. And that’s great: I’ve been saying the same thing here for two years now and its very nice to sense some kind of wheel turning out there. So, more power to Abigal but, even though its early days, I think I can already see how this is going to go from the reviews that are in so far.
Predictably, the Daily Mail is ecstatic about the whole thing. It hasn’t just been nice about the book, it’s treated it as front-page news and serialised it.[1] Similarly, the Telegraph has carried an admiring in-depth interview with the author[2] and Unherd carried a long supportive review.[3] So far, the Guardian has ignored it and so have Therapy Today and the other trade magazines of the therapy industry and so have the therapy twitterati - silence.
But well-known mental health commentator, David Healey (psychiatrist, academic and expert witness) has produced a review and it’s a curious piece of work:[4] he drifts into a bit of socio-political analysis based on Democrat and Republican voting aspirations (which actually isn’t as odd as it might seem – see below), he can’t resist a bit of chin stroking analysis of the writer: ‘the author had me wondering what her sound and fury signified’ and there’s a very strange hybridized conclusion: ‘The Kids grew up okay then. I’m inclined to think they will today also but the exposure of Americans so early in life to drug and therapy inputs is leading to falls in life expectancy and fertility for this generation. When the Kids, who do get to grow up, look back will they ask – Where were the Adults?’ What’s that – falls in life expectancy for a generation and in fertility (and its attributable to healthcare), but he’s inclined to think it’ll be OK? What’s missing here is any sense of position or response to a really dramatic (and very serious) allegation - that’s very therapeutic.[5]
The New Scientist preserves a detached, speculative, on-the-fence approach, on the basis nothing here can be proven.[6] And that’s right, which is why Healey’s drift into Democrat and Republican voting patterns make more sense than might first appear: arguments about mental health and the effectiveness of therapy can’t be ‘won’ (at the moment); they are purely ideological and they are driven by people’s appetite for care. If you have higher levels of anxiety and feel more vulnerable, you will have a stronger appetite for care (and a greater predisposition towards mental health issues[7]). And that attitude to care underlies right and left-wing politics, attitudes to environmental issues, gender and race, generational tensions and most of the themes the world is polarizing around at the moment.
So Shrier’s book isn’t going to change anything; she has just added her voice to the cacophony. It’s not a new voice and it will be absorbed by the mental healthcare complex. It’s happened before – philosophical ‘concerns’ about the possibility of ‘iatrogenic’ illness have been embedded in the therapeutic canon for decades, everybody acknowledges the theoretical issue and no-one takes it seriously enough to suggest doing anything different (a bit like the end of the Healey review, it just gets blanked, there’s no reaction to it).
Because she’s an investigative journalist, not a clinician, Shrier isn’t that interested in how ‘Bad Therapy’ has had this effect on people, and especially the young – what the psychological mechanisms involved are. That’s what I’ve been writing about here over the last two years.
There was a really funny, interesting, independent British movie, a few years ago, touching on mental health, called Burn, Burn, Burn in which the protagonists find a new kind of solving mantra, a code that allows them to change, to develop, to be happier, to live better and it is ‘Just stop being a dick’.[8] And that’s exactly right: mental illness has its roots in self-hatred; if you hate yourself too much, behave better and you won’t.
I’ll leave the last word on the reviews on Bad Therapy to the pinnacle of intelligent journalism: the FT. This is its conclusion: ‘She is too harsh, in my view, on therapy. But she is unequivocally on the side of parents and teenagers: which makes this a thought-provoking, though uncomfortable, read.’[9] Note a causal link there – the book is made worthwhile (worth attention) because the author is perceived as unequivocally on the side of parents and teenagers. It’s allowed to be worthwhile because it’s perceived to be sympathetic and compassionate: ideas don’t have to be entertained (to provoke thoughts) if the source isn’t felt to be sympathetic to you.
If something true were being said about something very destructive being done to a lot of people, surely it really shouldn’t matter how much the message has to be sugar-coated? That’s the same kind of self-indulgent, Bad Therapy inspired, everyone’s-a-winner bromide that the book is complaining about having come to dominate parenting and education.
We just can’t get our mouths off this tit.[10] In its erosion of people’s ability to meet the world around them half-way, it’s caused so much unhappiness. And its going to carry on.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13120983/touchy-feely-parenting-therapy-Generation-Z-loneliest-depressed-young-people.html and Young people increasingly blame mental health for being out of work https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13124717/Generation-sicknote-Young-people-increasingly-blaming-mental-health-work-critics-question-just-snowflakery.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/03/abigail-shrier-bad-therapy-mental-health-children-suicide/
[3] https://unherd.com/2024/02/bad-therapy-is-stunting-our-kids/
[4] https://davidhealy.org/why-the-kids-arent-growing-up/
[5] As in, like a therapist – not as in good for you. And the chin-stroking wondering what her sound and fury signified is typical too. If you’re a therapist and someone is unhappy with you, the issue is what’s up with them, rather than what you might be up to yourself.
[6] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26134800-500-bad-therapy-review-is-mental-health-industry-fuelling-youth-crisis/
[7] That appetite for care can get twisted around and express itself in some fairly perverse forms: it’s not just bleeding heart liberals who develop mental health problems
[8] This is a metaphorical dick; both the protagonists are female
[9] Bad Therapy is the ‘cure’ for children worse than the disease? https://www.ft.com/content/f6f70c72-571d-4573-bf7b-d6dd0bf70997
[10] This is a metaphorical tit: the Kleinian breast. The point being its baby food, for babies.