Abigail Shrier turned the publishing world upside down four years ago with her essay ‘An irreversible damage: the transgender madness that seduces our daughters’. Controversial for its theses, it was censored and was withdrawn from American bookstores for some time until it ended up returning to shelves as “the book of the year.” This writer born in Maryland (United States), former columnist for ‘The Wall Street Journal’, has just published her next essay in Spain ‘Bad therapy: why children do not mature’ (Deusto), in which he defends that to fight the mental health crisis in children and adolescents we do not need more psychologists, but fewer. But Shrier, through hundreds of interviews with teachers, parents, psychologists and young people, also comes to the conclusion that we are facing the sneakiest generation of history. Lucid, brave and vehement, Shrier argues to ABC other of the many – and daring – ideas of ‘Bad Therapy’.
—How do you come to the conclusion that it is the therapists’ fault that we are raising immature adults?
—Since the Second World War, the field of mental health began to expand and with each decade we doubled the number of psychologists with the aim of preventing mental illnesses. But what happened is that we stopped treating the sick and started treating the healthy. Schools are full of psychologists and counselors who do not stop asking students about their feelings and, however, more children than ever believe that they have a mental illness, with the aggravating factor that neither a child nor an adolescent has the experience vital enough to stop and say, “Okay, wait a minute. “I don’t think this therapy is working.” We are overprotecting, overdiagnosing and overmedicating our children, but this does not mean that there are not some young people who need therapy or pills to stabilize. Nobody is denying it.
—It says that these overprotected minors are also the most snitches in history.
—One of the most disturbing aspects of the new generations is that they feel useless and do not believe that they can face a problem on their own. Not even the most basic tasks like talking to a stranger on the phone or asking for a raise. When the young population is not capable of confronting a friend or a classmate and trying to resolve a conflict directly, then they resort – hidden behind technological tools – to snitching, accusing each other, and giving themselves away. In high school and even at the university, it has been detected how more and more students are using compromising screenshots to accuse a classmate before a teacher or the principal of a school. This is largely a side effect of overtreatment in therapy, which is highly debilitating.
—Will overmedicated children be more likely to be drug addicts?
—There are some medications that should only be prescribed as a last option and that are highly addictive, such as stimulants to treat attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, benzodiazepines… But in addition to the risk of getting hooked, the problem with the introduction of a stimulant is that the possibility of the child discovering what he is capable of on his own is eliminated and he will always think that if, for example, he is good at mathematics, it is because there was a pill that helped him.
The language plot
«There are no longer shy children, but rather those with social phobia. But we should tell them otherwise and insist on how strong they are.”
—Technologies do not help the balance of our young people either.
—Of course not. There are researchers like Jonathan Haidt who are linking mental health problems in adolescents with the use of social networks. I believe that screens should disappear from classrooms, but it is true that we cannot blame cell phones alone for the weaknesses that characterize this generation. We are psychopathologizing some normal behaviors of our children as unhealthy. There are no longer shy children, but rather those with social phobia, nor are they restless, because they all have ADHD. Language also feeds this machinery of overdiagnosis and medication. We should tell them otherwise and insist on how strong they are.
—Are you in favor of the figure of the father-enemy?
—I am in favor of authority, of a father or mother teaching their child what is right and what is wrong. This does not mean that we should not be affectionate with them, at all. But our children have to be clear about who is in charge because it gives them security. Right now we are surrounding our teenagers with educators, psychologists and counselors, but they are not experts in parenting, they don’t really know our children. They are not close to them. Modern society is absolutely paternalistic with parents, condescending.
—If it is not therapeutic, what approach should education have?
—Must have rules of behavior and high expectations. It must have History, Mathematics, Literature lessons…Of course. But education must also punish bad behavior. One of the healthiest things you can do for a growing child is to give them chores and responsibilities, but also respect their independence and playtime. Let him be wrong. If we just ask what do you feel now? what do you think about? or what is your identity? We are giving them the recipe for unhappiness.
—What advice would you give to a father or mother in Spain?
—First of all, don’t follow the example of the United States in terms of family relationships, since Spaniards still have the entire family close to them, something that we have lost. But what I would say loud and clear – and not only to the Spanish – is: «Fathers of the world, let
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