Teens Got Therapy. Then They Got Worse | Hacker News Reader

Teens Got Therapy. Then They Got Worse

theatlantic.com

27 pointsJimmc41431 comments

1. Is it possible that the teen mental health crisis is a natural and healthy response to conditions that do not allow for a healthy mind? And therefore, should we not be addressing the causes of the crisis, rather than trying to heal the symptoms? What if it simply sucks to be a teen in 2023, the way Western society has set up their environment, and the answer isn't more zoloft and CBT?

2. Interesting parallel here with mandatory DEI trainings apparently also not accomplishing much of anything besides job creation: https://www.reworked.co/employee-experience/most-dei-trainin... . Another example of an unexamined unquestioned good that seems to not live up to rigorous scrutiny, akin to therapy.

Wonder if the universal, age and geography-agnostic pattern here, as the author points out, is that "you can’t change people who aren’t ready to change".

> mandatory DEI trainings […] unexamined unquestioned good that seems to not live up to rigorous scrutiny

DEI trainings are quite effective at accomplishing their real purpose—that is, warding off lawsuits by progressive activists by paying them ideological tribute.

> Is it possible that the teen mental health crisis is a natural and healthy response to conditions that do not allow for a healthy mind?

Absolutely. Social media, breakdown of family structure, ambiguity of social norms....I don't know how teens manage at all.

Also a very reasonable belief that the future will be worse for them than it was for their parents.

I’m not one of those “now is the worst time ever” people, there’s a lot to love about our current state of the world — but there’s also a lot to be legitimately worried about on a few important trajectories.

I'm 19. Everyone in these threads is pretty much getting at it, and can confirm a lot of the issues being mentioned in here. shit sucks. don't know what else to say :/

As a middle aged man, I can say sorry.

just a weird time to be alive. Doing my best to have a good time :)

Family is huge. When I have kids I sure as hell will invest in them with every fibre of my being so that they never feel neglected.

When I was a teen I was pretty much left on my own. It sucked.

I hope you do. Thanks.

Per #2, the article you linked doesn’t conclude that DEI isn’t valuable, rather that it’s usually not executed effectively.

> That doesn't mean DEI efforts don't work. It is possible to create a program that spurs real change. But it must be reinforced with systems, processes, accountability and rewards, said Owyoung, and continually and actively measured.

And there’s more in the article highlighting the specific gains from doing DEI effectively.

"These results are, well, depressing. Therapy is supposed to relieve depression, not exacerbate it."

Why? Let's say that a person is currently being tortured, and is trying to fly off to a happy place, where there are different kinds of monsters. A therapist, next to the torturer and completely independent of them, is guiding the person back to reality, and making the person face reality as it is, trying to give them the strength necessary to do so. Inadvertently(?), the therapist is just making the person face the reality of torture again, rather than imagined demons. What is the right course of action then, for a therapist, if a patient of theirs is being tortured? This thought experiment should definitely be considered by practicing therapists when dealing with depressive phenomena in patients.

(disclosure: I am depressive, on heavy medication combined with therapy; my psychiatrist is facing the issues above head on, and neither of us are under any illusion as to how difficult things are.)

Fellow depressive here. Therapy doesn't make the bills go away (and in fact makes a NEW bill in many cases) so for a lot of Americans that's the major depressing factor.

However, much of my depressive time is spent just surviving through the day. I don't think of the past or future, just the now. And since the now is out of my hands, why care about how it makes me feel? The chores still need done, I gotta go to work, and how I feel changes none of those facts. I can be miserable and just numbly accept whatever is happening until I go to sleep and do it again.

Therapy which teaches a person with panic disorder ways to ground themselves with reality so they don't loop internally are helpful. Therapy for a depressive is like someone dangling a soda on a rope down the abyss I am desperately clinging to the side of and asking "wanna drink?"

You need to meditate.

That is the path back to the here and now. You gotta do the work.

Also find a better therapist. Depressive is not an identity, it is an old school label.

You can do it.

I'm doing a lot better these days on Zoloft, and have been working through a lot of things with my wife, coaching each other through things. My previous mode was to stuff everything down and ignore it, and I actively try to keep tabs on how I'm feeling to combat it.

Most of these are waves caused by childhood events out of my control, and I was taken to therapy off and on throughout my childhood and teens. I got nothing from therapy each time because of that mindset in which I believed therapy wouldn't make my life different and until I can make my life different, there's no sense in processing my emotions or talking about how something makes me feel.

I have also gained a strong Catholic faith through it all, which has been very good for my mental health. I only labeled myself a depressive because historically that's who I have been since about age 8. It has affected my positivity and made me complain a lot (a habit I have worked hard to kick), attracted me to cynical dark humor, and warped my sense of self a lot. I'm not opposed to therapy because I'm in a stable place in life and ready to do the work, but I have come a long way with my wife alone.

The type of therapy you're talking about is based in Gestalt principles, and when done effectively has a certain aggressive and confrontational aspect to the sessions that some find difficult to return to.

especially when the market for therapist-shoppers is full of soft touch, utterly ineffective rent-a-friend techniques which merely create an ongoing regular income stream for the practitioner, while doing very little to help the patient out of the condition they are in.

This sounds a bit like the plot to the hokey Zach Snyder egopiece Sucker Punch (2011), in which the main girl finds the resolve she needs to carry on in the real world, inside the fantasy world she inhabits where she and her friends are badasses in sexy clothing. I always got the feeling that movie was teasing something interesting to say, but fumbling the ball in the delivery of the message.

As a patient of more than 10 therapists, none has proactively discussed with me the effectiveness of therapy, nor discussed how their style of intervention may make my depression worse. For me as someone who has thought about the past far too much, there was always a therapist there to rehash the past, and help me overthink it more.

My psychiatrists have always recommended searching for a new therapist when a previous one did not work. I told them the old apocryphal Einstein quote about insanity being trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. They still said search for a new one.

I finally stopped seeing therapists, started meditating, and am making real progress toward getting better.

What form of meditation have you had luck with? I’ve tried to start a few times and always sputtered out without success.

Seconding Waking Up with some explanation. It does a lot more than just teach you to breathe and focus. It gives incredibly insightful lessons on the nature of consciousness so that you learn to see your emotions in a new way and realize that stimulus and reaction both exist in the same space within you.

I think that's just the nature of meditation. Basic breathing and body scan works for me.

Try the Waking Up App by Sam Harris.

First of all, before you reply please read the article. This is from an Australian-based study, so throw out your assumptions related to American situations (ie the need to let teens roam or what not).

Given that, I think the issue is far simpler: Increasingly extreme work-related demands is causing strain on families which manifest in poorer parent-child relations and higher rates of depression.

Essentially, the world is following the trends that Japan went down a few decades ago. Parents are working longer hours for less pay, with lower family interaction. Teenagers aren't stupid either, they see these trends from their parents and either stop engaging with society altogether or lash out.

Are you saying Australian teens go outside and roam? We are pretty much the same as the USA.

https://archive.ph/qeOjT

The problem is Psychology is a psuedosicence built entirely on a foundation of cargo cult.

Cargo Cult Science: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

The Control Group is out of Control: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...

I used to view psychology as a pseudoscience but some of their methods have given some results for me. My therapist has introduced me to ACT to deal with some negative thoughts that come to me out of nowhere that I end up obsessing over. The act of creating a layer of separation between me and the bad thoughts by labeling them actually was a pretty effective way to cope.

A modern teen is being subjected to a relentless barrage of advertising, and usually trapped in sedentary activities.

Children and teens need exercise and nature. In general, consumer culture has been searching for the limitations of the human mind to absorb advertising.

I think at some point around 2010 we crossed the threshold.

>Children and teens need exercise and nature.

And adults. Adults, too. Also, funny you mention "consumer culture". I was railing against that about 20 years ago on the internet of the time, saying that it's going to go online, and crush us all. Funny how things turned out...

prisoners' dillema on hyperspeed without a clear way to regulate it.

if you don't build the predatory addictive app, someone else will.

we all keep chugging ourselves along into tech jobs (myself included) and the system gets worse.

sucks to suck man not sure there's a way to fix it

I wish the prescription and treatment of exercise and time in nature were as common as pharmaceuticals.

A sedentary life is becoming the default, and once that pattern is established you don't realize how much better you'd feel if you were active.

This is why so many people become "fitness nuts." They've seen the transition in their own lives and they just can't help but desire everyone around them to feel it too.

If healthy is wealthy, poverty seems to be skyrocketing .

Something that surprised me is elementary and middle schools hardly do recess anymore. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, we had 30 minutes of recess every day around 10am. We then had a PE class every afternoon. Kids have too much energy to sit in a classroom and learn boring stuff, they need to burn it out first. We had 200 years of figuring out how to educate children in the US, it's like we as a society suddenly forgot.

>Children and teens need exercise and nature. In general, consumer culture has been searching for the limitations of the human mind to absorb advertising.

The one good thing about today, at least for me, is the only time I am subject to invasive advertising (like TV commercials) is when I watch sports. I absorb way less since streaming and cutting cable. I'm working on absorbing way less news, the way news is presented today is horrible for people. If I feel like I need to catch some headlines, I prep myself by thinking, "get ready for doomscroll."

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