In recent decades there has been a big push to get more Americans to talk about their feelings.
But now experts are beginning to wonder whether widespread use of the therapy may be having the opposite effect and actually fueling America’s depression crisis.
They argue that treatment, no matter how well-intentioned, can instill a “victim” mentality in which people become hyperfocused on their feelings and less engaged with the world around them, making them more depressed.
About a quarter of American adults said they had visited a therapist or psychiatrist in 2022, which is double the number 20 years ago and much more than about 3 percent in the United Kingdom.
Therapeutic discourse has become so common that it has permeated the dominant culture in the United States. Clinical words used during counseling, such as “gaslighting,” “trauma,” and “microaggressions,” have become household terms.
Teacher Robert Dingwall, social scientist and UK government adviser., He told DailyMail.com that, looking at the situation in the United States, there is concern among sociologists that people are referred to therapy at the slightest sign of difficulty in their life.
“There is a tendency to medicalize everyday problems in pursuit of commercial interests,” he said, whether it’s rejection from a partner or a failed job interview.
“This is something that people have been saying for 50 or 60 years, a concern that has been expressed by both psychiatrists and sociologists.”
This fosters a victim mentality, said Shawn Smith, a Colorado-based clinical psychologist.
Professor Dingwall said whether therapy does more harm than good is a long-standing discussion in medical sociology.
Smith told DailyMail.com that the therapy may be harming American youth by “encouraging children to spend, frankly, too much time navel-gazing and not engaging in the world and developing meaningful relationships and activities.”
‘To any extent, therapy contributes to this. It’s a problem,’ she said.
More American adults have received mental health diagnoses than adults in any other high-income country, according to the Commonwealth Fundleading people to wonder if Americans are much sicker or simply being overdiagnosed.
Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher recently criticized the rise of Americans with mental illness, saying, “Post-traumatic stress disorder is for people who fought in Iraq, not for people who want to take their dog on a plane.”
“The way we know people are depressed is that there is a turning inward… and typically, you see relentless scrutiny of yourself, your thoughts, your feelings and your presentation,” Dr. Smith said.
Overtherapy can contribute to this, he said, “if we have kids who are just mindlessly examining themselves, then we’re setting them up to turn inward and collapse inward, collapse in on themselves and become depressed.” ‘
Professor Dingwall said whether therapy does more harm than good is a long-standing debate in medical sociology.
Not only has the number of people in the US receiving therapy increased, but the amount of time spent in therapy has also increased.
In 2022, 13 percent of Americans visited a mental health professional five or more times in the previous 12 months, compared to six percent in 2004.
In the United Kingdom in 2014, only three percent of adults were receiving psychological therapy, according to the Mental Health Foundation.
The percentage of adults who report having been diagnosed with depression has reached 29 percent, almost 10 percentage points higher than in 2015.
Abigail Shrier, author of Bad Therapy, a book about mental health myths and the medicalization of American children, said in a podcast that she feels the therapy is counterproductive.
‘Anytime there is increased treatment in a population, increased accessibility for anything from breast cancer to maternal sepsis with more antibiotics, you want to see prevalence rates go down.
Shawn Smith, a Colorado-based clinical psychologist, told DailyMail.com that medicalizing everyday problems fosters a victim mentality.
‘We want to see the incidence of depression or anxiety in adolescents decrease, because we know that these children are receiving great treatment. Instead, it’s shooting up… so we know that at least it doesn’t seem to be helping.’
In 2021, a group of researchers called this the “treatment prevalence paradox.”
“We are referring to the increasing availability of better treatments, juxtaposed with the absence of a corresponding decline in the prevalence of depression,” they said.
A record one in three adults in the United States has had clinical depression at some point in their lives, according to a 2023 Gallup poll.
The percentage of adults reporting having been diagnosed with depression has reached 29 percent, up almost 10 percentage points from 2015.
And nearly one in five (18 percent) American adults are currently depressed, another record.
Professor Dingwall said: “It is difficult to disentangle the extent to which we are seeing a mental health crisis among young people, or an expansion of definitions of mental health problems, which is generating more business for pharmaceutical companies and therapists.” “That is the debate that needs to be expanded more widely.”
Dr. Smith said expanding definitions of mental health problems may also mean lowering the bar for some mental illnesses.
The CDC found that one in ten U.S. high school students attempted suicide in 2021, up from 8.9 percent the year before. Women were hardest hit: 13.3 percent attempted suicide that year.
He said: “It can certainly turn into something bad when it interferes with someone who is otherwise doing well in life, and suddenly starts thinking that they are disordered.”
“And then they start treating themselves like they’re disordered and they’re not doing as well as they used to.”
This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for teenagers, he added.
The stigma of mental illness has also eased. Eighty-seven percent of Americans agree that having a mental health disorder is nothing to be ashamed of, the American Psychological Association found.
As therapy has become more socially acceptable, Professor Dingwall said, people without mental illness may be seeking it out.
“What we may be seeing is a problem of overdiagnosis and overtreatment,” he said.
‘It is a paradox that once a treatment is available, it can attract more people into the network, be prescribed more widely and used for what were previously considered marginal cases. This is always a risk unless these things are examined very closely.’
Dr. Paul Minot, a psychiatrist for almost four decades, said TIME feels that his industry is too quick to gloss over the “ambiguity” of mental health, cementing diagnoses as true when in reality there is a gray area.
There is also a risk of people becoming dependent on their therapist.
“This is something that has been recognized since the days of Sigmund Freud and the beginnings of psychoanalysis,” Professor Dingwall said.
‘If the experience of therapy becomes too comforting, a kind of addiction to it and to the therapist is certainly possible and then we have what Freud called endless therapy. That is, something that cannot reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion,” said Australian psychotherapist David White.
Depending on the type of therapy, some people may come away feeling worse.
“There is also a debate within the therapeutic community itself,” Professor Dingwall said. “There is a group known as brief therapists who are very critical of their colleagues, for exaggerating problems, for perhaps trapping people in therapy for unnecessarily long periods, and for changing their lives in a way that increases rather than decreases distress.” .
In contrast, brief therapists focus on practical, short-term interventions, which are designed to move people forward as quickly as possible.
“Brief therapists maintain that they focus on solutions, rather than necessarily hoping to delve deeper into people’s problems.”
Dr Max Pemberton, a British psychiatrist and DailyMail.com columnist, said the overdiagnosis of mental illness “limits” young people and that therapy can mean they “never really move forward, are stuck in a land of perpetual victimhood, chained to a grief, trauma or difficulty, dragging it like a weight around your ankle.
He said that while the younger generation has embraced the idea that we should constantly examine our feelings, they are not better off for it and instead people have become “a little more self-obsessed and a little more narcissistic.” .
“Many seem to wear their problems like a badge of pride, allowing them to define them,” Pemberton added.
Any intervention that has the potential to help also has the potential to harm patients, Shrier said. Unherd.
“That’s true for everything from Tylenol to X-rays… and it’s also true for psychotherapy.”
He listed the known harms of psychotherapy as things like worsening anxiety, worsening depression, a feeling of ineffectiveness as if I couldn’t do (things) for myself, a feeling of demoralization as if I were limited by this diagnosis, and alienation from family. . members.
Shrier said there are two groups of people: one with serious mental illnesses who do not receive sufficient treatment or services in the United States, and another known as “the well-troubled.”
‘These people do not suffer deeply. They are the discouraged teenagers of the West. They’re scared, they’re worried, they’re sad, but they don’t have major depressive disorder.’
“I don’t think they have a mental illness,” Shrier said. “I think they’re being treated like they’re mentally ill, they’re encouraged to think they’re mentally ill, they’re becoming mentally ill in a way.”