Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up | A Conversation with Abigail Shrier

Manhattan Insights

In their efforts to ensure their children's happiness, a growing number of millennial and Gen X parents are turning to therapists, school psychologists, and other mental health professionals for help. Yet there is mounting evidence that this therapeutic turn has backfired. Rather than inculcate the virtues of self-discipline and independence, these efforts have yielded a generation of children filled with anxiety, isolation, and a profound sense of helplessness—and in her new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, Abigail Shrier explains why.

After speaking with hundreds of parents and adolescents, drawing on psychiatric studies and literature, in addition to her own lived experience with friends and family, Abigail offers a powerful critique of the booming mental health industry, and offers an alternate vision for fostering healthy, hard-working, and resilient children. In this special episode of Manhattan Insights, The Free Press Senior Editor Emily Yoffe (moderator) sits down with Abigail to discuss her findings.

Abigail Shrier is the author of the new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. She received the Barbara Olson Award for Excellence and Independence in Journalism in 2021. Her best-selling book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020), was named a “Best Book” by The Economist and the Times (of London). It has been translated into ten languages. She holds an A.B. from Columbia College, where she received the Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship; a B.Phil. from the University of Oxford; and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She has written for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal for a number of years.

(Recorded on Wednesday, February 28th, 2024)

**Related readings & links**

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/716567/bad-therapy-by-abigail-shrier/