So good. Again. Shrier’s book was so enlightening. My wife is a school teacher and sees this stuff all the time. My speculation for why is two fold.
1. There’s money to be made here. More sick people means more patients, which means more money. This is usually the reason for any proven detrimental entity that people are digging their heels in as good in the face of proven contradiction.
2. This consistent insistence that we prioritize feelings over policy. If something could possibly hurt someone’s feelings then it must be bad. Which itself has two facets:
a) we can’t face the reality that someone might get their feelings hurt and just work to universalize everything and
b) there’s an internal guilt that gets suppressed as long as one is virtue signaling. “Look how good I am. I’m making sure everyone gets the mental health help they need.” While we ignore the fact that most kids don’t need that help, as your article brilliantly laid out.
I'd argue there's a third reason - to cover their butts from lawsuits. Families have successfully sued districts after a kid attempted suicide, saying the schools failed to do anything. I think schools implement tons of these programs so they can turn to parents and say "look at everything we did". It's an insurance policy.
It will Change. Your. Life. Having said that, I don’t agree with 100% of what she says in that book. She’s a bit over-critical of psychotherapists. And she clearly writes from a disdain and bad taste in her mouth for psychotherapy. There are places for psychotherapy for adults and children.
But her overall point is spot on. We are injecting things into their heads that weren’t there previously because, overall, children are quite resilient by nature when we allow them to be. Abigail nails it and simply lets the experts talk.
Thank you Kate for this article! It's the same here in New Zealand, it's all gone mad. We'd like to know how much $$ this industry is generating. Because that's what it is. A lucrative 'mental health' industry. This is not about the wellbeing of children, it's about creating more patients for the pharmaceutical and medical industry. And creating industries in online data gathering - and worse. Meanwhile, are we getting better 'mental health' outcomes for our children. NO. No, we are not.
My kid's school introduced a mindfulness based program called 'smiling minds'. I questioned the teacher and the headmaster about it and they all just recited the talking points from m the promotional literature about it being scientific and being backed by studies.
I actually went and read the studies and they were all complete garbage. There was no way they demonstrated anything. Then I went and researched the people behind the program, one was a property developer and the other was a kind of entrepreneur boss babe corporate woman. They'd met at some Buddhist thing and decided that they should be pushing this stuff on primary school kids.
Somehow the schools were just just like, yeah this is fine, do whatever you want.
When I asked that my daughter not participate, the teacher actually started trying to persuade me, trotting out the 'backed by studies' line, even though it was obvious she hadn't looked at any of the studies herself because she would have instantly seen they were bogus. I was very polite, didn't argue, I just thanked them and said I'd looked into it and would rather my daughter not participate. You could have cut the tension with a knife. I could feel it as I was sorted into the 'troublesome parent' basket.
This is the underlying problem. The teachers and admin take no responsibility for the direction of the kids education. Everything comes from a higher authority and the most important quality anyone can display in that environment is complicity. In a school with dozens of teachers and admin staff no-one actually checked on the claims being made by a mental health intervention being rolled out to every student, they just implemented it. I assume they all just thought 'well, someone must have checked it out before it got to us so it must be fine'.
The truly shocking thing was that it wasn't even hard to check up on, it took me about half an hour to discover that it was all bullshit.
You are correct to disambiguate this assumption, considering the LGBTQ+ (including allies) staff whose interests get mixed into the social justice battle for “equal protection,” “equality,” and “rights.” I just finished listening to Chris Rufo’s latest audio recording on the feminization of the university system. We have to mind our minds inorder to keep the institutions healthy. It has to be done as a culture. It will not happen by passing legislation.
Thank you Kate, and YOU are spot on, too. It seems so manifestly obvious to us, can’t help but wonder what’s taking everyone else so long to get here. Keep plugging away. They’ll get the lightbulb moment eventually.
Why am I not surprised? Thanks for the graphic from the Health Smart program - now I know to ask my school if they’re using that curriculum! The lack of communication and transparency between schools and parents is horrifying to me - and why they get away with teaching this rot to our kids!
So good. Again. Shrier’s book was so enlightening. My wife is a school teacher and sees this stuff all the time. My speculation for why is two fold.
1. There’s money to be made here. More sick people means more patients, which means more money. This is usually the reason for any proven detrimental entity that people are digging their heels in as good in the face of proven contradiction.
2. This consistent insistence that we prioritize feelings over policy. If something could possibly hurt someone’s feelings then it must be bad. Which itself has two facets:
a) we can’t face the reality that someone might get their feelings hurt and just work to universalize everything and
b) there’s an internal guilt that gets suppressed as long as one is virtue signaling. “Look how good I am. I’m making sure everyone gets the mental health help they need.” While we ignore the fact that most kids don’t need that help, as your article brilliantly laid out.
I'd argue there's a third reason - to cover their butts from lawsuits. Families have successfully sued districts after a kid attempted suicide, saying the schools failed to do anything. I think schools implement tons of these programs so they can turn to parents and say "look at everything we did". It's an insurance policy.
I am living this as a parent. I cannot bring myself to read Shrier’s book. It’s on my coffee table!
It will Change. Your. Life. Having said that, I don’t agree with 100% of what she says in that book. She’s a bit over-critical of psychotherapists. And she clearly writes from a disdain and bad taste in her mouth for psychotherapy. There are places for psychotherapy for adults and children.
But her overall point is spot on. We are injecting things into their heads that weren’t there previously because, overall, children are quite resilient by nature when we allow them to be. Abigail nails it and simply lets the experts talk.
I just don’t love case studies.
Thank you Kate for this article! It's the same here in New Zealand, it's all gone mad. We'd like to know how much $$ this industry is generating. Because that's what it is. A lucrative 'mental health' industry. This is not about the wellbeing of children, it's about creating more patients for the pharmaceutical and medical industry. And creating industries in online data gathering - and worse. Meanwhile, are we getting better 'mental health' outcomes for our children. NO. No, we are not.
My kid's school introduced a mindfulness based program called 'smiling minds'. I questioned the teacher and the headmaster about it and they all just recited the talking points from m the promotional literature about it being scientific and being backed by studies.
I actually went and read the studies and they were all complete garbage. There was no way they demonstrated anything. Then I went and researched the people behind the program, one was a property developer and the other was a kind of entrepreneur boss babe corporate woman. They'd met at some Buddhist thing and decided that they should be pushing this stuff on primary school kids.
Somehow the schools were just just like, yeah this is fine, do whatever you want.
When I asked that my daughter not participate, the teacher actually started trying to persuade me, trotting out the 'backed by studies' line, even though it was obvious she hadn't looked at any of the studies herself because she would have instantly seen they were bogus. I was very polite, didn't argue, I just thanked them and said I'd looked into it and would rather my daughter not participate. You could have cut the tension with a knife. I could feel it as I was sorted into the 'troublesome parent' basket.
This is the underlying problem. The teachers and admin take no responsibility for the direction of the kids education. Everything comes from a higher authority and the most important quality anyone can display in that environment is complicity. In a school with dozens of teachers and admin staff no-one actually checked on the claims being made by a mental health intervention being rolled out to every student, they just implemented it. I assume they all just thought 'well, someone must have checked it out before it got to us so it must be fine'.
The truly shocking thing was that it wasn't even hard to check up on, it took me about half an hour to discover that it was all bullshit.
You are correct to disambiguate this assumption, considering the LGBTQ+ (including allies) staff whose interests get mixed into the social justice battle for “equal protection,” “equality,” and “rights.” I just finished listening to Chris Rufo’s latest audio recording on the feminization of the university system. We have to mind our minds inorder to keep the institutions healthy. It has to be done as a culture. It will not happen by passing legislation.
Thank you Kate, and YOU are spot on, too. It seems so manifestly obvious to us, can’t help but wonder what’s taking everyone else so long to get here. Keep plugging away. They’ll get the lightbulb moment eventually.
Thanks for writing this. You hit the nail on the head with your assertion that it's really for the adults and not the kids.
Why am I not surprised? Thanks for the graphic from the Health Smart program - now I know to ask my school if they’re using that curriculum! The lack of communication and transparency between schools and parents is horrifying to me - and why they get away with teaching this rot to our kids!
Great article, thank you for sharing, I have restacked it.
Thank you, Elisabeth! 😃
Here’s another study concluding costly “preventative” mental health programs in schools are largely ineffective: https://open.substack.com/pub/alegalprocess/p/the-science-is-settling-school-mental?r=27r89s&utm_medium=ios