“With unprecedented help from mental health experts, we have raised the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, helpless, and fearful generation on record.” – Bad Therapy
In her fifth studio album, “1989”, tween queen, Taylor Swift, debuted her newest hit, “Shake it Off”, a sick beat decrying her many detractors for their ongoing negativity surrounding her troubled romantic life. In verse after verse, Swift defends her misunderstood life from the liars, cheaters, and fakes who try to bring her down. But Swift would have none of it. To borrow a page from “Psychology 101”, Swift used resilience to find her way through.
Today, the percentage of mental illness and therapy among demographic eras has grown drastically. The Silent Generation, the Boomers, and Gen Xers all came from strong family bonds, more community, and more religion. Millennials, those born beginning in the 1980s, along with Zoomers, had higher rates of anxiety and depression, having been raised in the era of the Internet and social media. Now more than 40 percent of Gen Alpha have been diagnosed with a mental illness, many numbing the pain with medication.
But the older generation not only survived the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, and Vietnam, they had a different quality of parents. Theirs spanked. If you didn’t like what was served for supper, you didn’t eat. When you rose in the morning, you exited the house, sometimes not returning until lunch or later. In the event of a setback, family support buoyed children back to well-being. Like the age-old expression, they simply put one foot in front of the other and found their way out. Remedies that would be unthinkable today.
Today’s youngsters are more likely to be raised in sanitized environments, free from problems, pain, and unpleasantness. Adding to their lack of privacy, free time, and play with friends and siblings, modern-day children have been stripped of the practice of risk, reward, and consequence. Instead, they are presented with safe choices, accommodations, and diminishing connections with family, friends, and community. Unlike their grandparents, today’s children are handed over to experts and therapists for proper diagnosis. But it's one thing to destigmatize mental illness, and quite another to apply it, en masse, to everyone.
This has led to a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) applied writ large. PTSD was officially adopted by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980, a modern version of shell shock seen by soldiers following warfare. Since then, it has evolved to include a plethora of other experiences, including childhood trauma. Growth of mental illness diagnoses comes not just from parents, and therapists, but begins in schools, with expanded counseling and staff on hand to encourage children to share their pain, through incessant and suggestive surveying and in-class discussions. Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children with 16.5 percent of those ages 6-17 diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or ADHD.
In Abigail Schrier’s 2024 book, “Bad Therapy”, Schrier discovers that therapy is more trendy than effective, with child trauma an end-all excuse for all life’s ills. With plenty of blame all around, Schrier reveals how schools, parents, and the therapy world all collude to make every ill an illness. From too much focus on a child’s emotional state to the practice of rehashing past and current grievances, children have lost the art of resilience, of adjusting to misfortune and change, and learning to adapt to new realities.
Misdiagnosing normal children can be destructive, with treatments themselves causing more harm than good. Being diagnosed tells children that something is wrong with them, that can only be fixed by therapy and drugs. With their feelings affirmed and accommodated, there is no need to bounce back. Ironically, those left undiagnosed often feel left out.
Not every child who goes through bouts of sadness, fear, and loneliness is mentally ill and in need of therapy. Adversity is a condition of life, endemic in every child and adult with reoccurring certainty. Instead of being trapped in the cycle of therapy and meds, many young people should consider joining the throngs of youngsters descending upon Taylor Swift’s Era’s tour and take to heart her message to just “Shake it Off”.
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