Children Raised Under Glass

A review of Abigail Shrier's 'Bad Therapy'

The kids are not alright. Mental health has never been worse among western youth because of, and not in spite of, society-wide efforts to address it. As Abigail Shrier explains in Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up, the therapeutic professions are “minting young patients faster than anyone could possibly cure them.”

Like D.A.R.E., the infamous antidrug program that accidentally increased kids’ interest in illegal drugs, scholastic use of mental health diagnosis is making kids into anxious, fragile people. “For thousands of years, until the therapeutic turn in parenting, societies took it for granted that parents’ primary job was to transmit their values to their children,” Shrier writes.

“Once parents decided the goal of child-rearing was emotional wellness, they effectively conceded that the actual authorities were therapists.” Worse, the therapeutic approach is nonjudgmental, unpunishing, so it does not instill self-control.

“Therapy can hijack our normal processes of resil…