First published 2025
Gen Z shows worse mental health outcomes than any previous generation despite unprecedented access to therapy and medication. Youth suicide climbs while antidepressant prescriptions for children become routine. Investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues the mental health experts themselves create the crisis they claim to solve. The industry transforms ordinary adolescent struggles into pathology, asking children repeatedly about their feelings and mining normal developmental challenges for billable diagnoses. Therapists treat healthy kids as patients, manufacturing disorders faster than cures. Through interviews with doctors, parents, therapists and young people, Shrier documents how unnecessary mental health interventions harm children. She examines how anxious parents who validate every emotion worsen outcomes. The book provides research-backed strategies for raising emotionally strong, independent children without therapeutic interference. Shrier offers parents permission to trust their instincts over expert opinion.
Genres: psychology, mental-health, social-issues, non-fiction
Vibes: critical, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: informed-consent, social-change
352 pages · Paperback · Planeta Publishing
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness, suicide