If George W. Bush were still commenting on social issues, he might say “is our children nuts?” With reports of 15% of children 10-19, globally, experiencing a mental illness, according to the WHO (1), and 12 million American adolescents on psychotropic medications (2), ya gotta wonder. Everything from family breakup, COVID, the economy, and global warming have been blamed. A decades long movement in the “helping professions” has promoted “awareness” as the way out. The way out is mainly “treatment” administered by some of those professionals. The troubled youth merely has to recognize that some of those swirling disturbling adolescent thoughts represent an illness requiring treatment.
A group of psychologists based in Oxford has reviewed this topic, finding that many of the consequences of deeply appreciating possible mental health symptoms actually tend to promote more mental illness behaviors (3). Monty Donanhue picked up on this scientific paper and summarized it for us in the lay audience (4). The link will provide you with a button for a 7-minute reading of the article if you’re lazy that way, like me. When I played it for my wife this morning, she said “but this is all just common sense”. If you talk about depression, some in the audience will emerge feeling depressed! If you take the fragile easily triggered child and nurture that fragility by placing them in their own protected space, how will that person develop the resilience to face the slings and arrows inevitably to come?
The same group has been at this topic a while, publishing a similar review in a lesser journal 7 years ago (5). The lead author from the recent Nature paper was in the middle of the masthead for the older review, still a grad student. Her PhD mentor posted a synopsis of her recent paper on X (6), which includes an instructive cartoon summarizing the 4 ways “mental health awareness” promotes mental illness. I reproduce it below.
For those troubling thoughts, how about heeding Martin Luther (although he was speaking about Satan’s temptations): “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair”?
(I don’t believe that was the reason for his haircut)
Maybe instead of attending therapy sessions, our troubled youth should just listen to a little Morris Albert (7)
References
1. Mental Health of Adolescents. World Health Organization 9/1/25. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-mental-health
2. Lopez-Leon S, Lopez-Gomez MI, Warner B, Ruiter-Lopez L. Psychotropic medication in children and adolescents in the United States in the year 2004 vs 2014. Daru. 2018 Sep;26(1):5-10. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6154488/
3. Foulkes L, Winterburn I, Sandra D et al. The psychological consequences of mental health awareness efforts. Nat Rev Psychol 2026;5, 173–84. https://theviewfromharbal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/7b95d-the-psychological-consequences-of-mental-health-awareness-efforts.pdf
4. Donahue M. Mental Health Awareness is Backfiring: New Science Shows How ‘Helpful’ Campaigns Are Manufacturing Illness. American Thinker 5/1/26. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/05/mental_health_awareness_is_backfiring_new_science_shows_how_helpful_campaigns_are_manufacturing_illness.html
5. Dunning DL, Griffiths K, Kuyken W, Crane C, Foulkes L, Parker J, Dalgleish T. Research Review: The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on cognition and mental health in children and adolescents – a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2019 Mar;60(3):244-258. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6546608/
6. Inzlicht M. X. 4/29/26. https://x.com/minzlicht/status/2049493735453389276?s=20
7. Oktavian Hermawan Susilo. Morris Albert – Feelings (1975). YouTube. https://youtu.be/sr_yaZQmRzA?si=oNzBO5W0tzRxKPXs
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