Devon Kurtz

This is incredibly useful because a constant refrain from many mental health industry advocates, who are constantly pushing their services toward younger and younger kids, is that “half of all mental health conditions develop by the age of 14.” That is totally misleading. Because (1) it’s not true, (2) the younger-age diagnoses are generally more mild conditions and forms of conditions that don’t necessarily improve with or require treatment—not the serious nor functionally impairing mental illnesses, and (3) its suggests that efforts to prevent mental illness “upstream” work, when they’re really WILDLY limited: we don’t know the causes of mental illnesses so we can’t prevent them. We’ve been pumping kids full of therapy speak, therapy itself, and pills. None of it is going to prevent mental illnesses from developing among those who will go on to develop one, and for the vast majority who will never go on to develop of a serious mental illness—statistically, between ~94-96% of kids—they’re being exposed unnecessarily to treatments and interventions that could put them at greater risk of harm than potential benefit. And since so much of youth mental health care is low-quality and doesn’t meet best clinical practices, kids are even more exposed to potential harm than they’d be otherwise. Mental healthcare is important and can be useful. But youth mental healthcare should be pursued/ delivered judiciously and thoughtfully.