Parents overtreating children with therapy and creating generation of fearful, helpless kids, author says

One author is warning parents against being overly reliant on therapy, arguing the increasing dependence is creating a generation of helpless children and is counterproductive to bettering their mental health. 

Abigail Shrier, author of 'Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up,' joined ‘The Brian Kilmeade Show’ to discuss the risks associated with showering children with unnecessary therapy and how that impacts them in the long run. 

"Nobody has gotten more therapy than the rising generation," Shrier told Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday. 

"No one's had more psych meds. No one's had more talk about feelings... No one has had more therapeutic parenting and therapeutic intervention in school, social-emotional learning, and you know what? It's not doing them any good. In fact, I would argue it's counterproductive. It's making them worse."

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She stressed that despite more access to therapy, the number of people suffering from disorders and other struggles has not declined. 

That's why Shrier says mental health professionals, although they are well-intentioned, are not actually helping the mental health crisis among America's youth. 

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"The mental health experts are claiming, 'Oh, we're just the firemen. We're just responding to the fire.' Not true," Shrier said. 

"They're the arsonists, and here's why. We've been doing preventive mental health care, flooding these kids with therapeutic techniques and methods and mindfulness techniques, wellness, for a generation now.

"No one has gotten more mental health intervention. No one's got more diagnoses. 42% of them have a mental health diagnosis. They've been in treatment now for a generation, and you know what? The self-focused, the feelings focus, the dependence on mental health experts that parents have to raise their kids. It's not helping," she continued. 

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Ultimately, Shrier argued that the kids who get the most unnecessary mental health treatment are less likely to want to take risks because they don't have the same type of independence other kids do. Kilmeade asked what the surge in mental health resources is robbing children of. 

"Efficacy. Feeling like, I can do this. I can figure it out. I can take a risk," Shrier responded. "They're so afraid of trauma. They think they can't. They think they've been bullied. They think they've been traumatized. These kids think they have PTSD if they get dumped."

As a result, the situation has yielded children who have everything from "menu anxiety" to "PTSD" as a result of the over-saturation. 

Abigail Shrier, author of the book "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters." (Screenshot/Abigail Shrier interview)

She stressed the importance of children being able to take risks and learn responsibility, which can be ingrained in them through things like chores and empowering them to make some of their own decisions. 

"We have let these kids become so frantic and so worried, and then we bring in these mental health experts… supposedly as the solution," Shrier said. "They're not the solution. They are the worry-makers, and they're creating the problem."

Shrier emphasized that therapy and psychiatric medication is necessary in some instances for children, but cautioned parents about the risks.

"What I want parents to know is not that therapy is never appropriate, not that psych meds are never appropriate. … But every medical intervention, every drug - even Tylenol - comes with risk and therapy does too," she concluded.

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