00:00:46.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:01:50.000So my book, Bad Therapy, Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up, it's all about why this generation, the rising generation known as Gen Z, why the generation that has received the most mindfulness tips, the most wellness tips, the most therapy, the most mental health diagnosis, and the most psychiatric medication, they should be the picture of mental health.
00:02:10.000Instead, they're the picture of despair.
00:02:12.000So the kids who've gotten the most therapy are actually in the most distress.
00:02:16.000And I wanted to know why and why do they have no interest in growing up?
00:02:20.000And it turns out the flood of therapy they've been getting in the culture, in schools, in offices of therapists have been really counterproductive.
00:02:31.000They've convinced a generation that has trauma.
00:02:34.000So many of them are nearly 42% have a diagnosis and they believe they are unwell.
00:02:42.000Over half of them think they are unwell mentally.
00:02:44.000And that's why they are not really feeling up to the challenges of adulthood.
00:02:49.000Do you think there's an over-diagnosis problem where you have 42% of young people that say they have some form of a diagnosis?
00:02:56.000Is this just kind of the normal speed bumps of life that might get categorized as like general anxiety disorder?
00:03:03.000Or is it that there actually is an intake in the an uptick in the objective, let's say, characteristics that would say someone's anxious or depressed?
00:03:14.000Or is it just that if you don't have a diagnosis, you're kind of missing out?
00:03:44.000Those kids were not on social media, but they were in a culture that is way over psychopathologizing normal human adult, you know, normal human emotional reaction.
00:03:56.000We're convincing a whole population of kids that they're unwell.
00:04:00.000So let's say, let's take their argument at face value, they being the medical industry, that 42% of kids actually have legitimate mental health issues.
00:04:10.000The treatment is not even working for people that might have legitimate issues.
00:05:20.000I think mental health experts writt large are mostly to blame.
00:05:24.000They've written all the best-selling parenting books.
00:05:26.000They've completely undermined parents' sense that they have any confidence in what they're doing, that they know what they're doing.
00:05:32.000They've convinced a generation of parents that if they don't know about the amygdala of their children, they can't possibly raise a good child.
00:05:39.000It's a ridiculous, it's a ridiculous assertion, but literally nearly all of them makes it.
00:05:45.000And they've taught parents that they can never punish.
00:05:48.000They can never hold kids to high expectations or high standards because that could be emotionally traumatizing.
00:05:56.000I wrote the book to show it isn't true and to try to stop the constant, you know, pushing around of parents by mental health experts.
00:06:05.000Yeah, there is a bullying and there's a pushing towards it.
00:06:09.000And but it's also, it's part of these campaigns that happen at school as well.
00:06:14.000The parents themselves might just be raising their kids in the traditional way that they were raised, but then they'll go to school and they'll say that, you know, hey, this is mental health awareness week or, you know, and then it spreads almost like, dare I say, a social contagion, which that might make this book almost like a sequel to your original.
00:06:37.000I mean, it's just a broader look at all the ways the mental health experts have convinced a generation of kids and their parents that they're not well and they're not up to the challenges of life.
00:06:46.000And you said a social contagion, look, just like they spread and they did, the mental health experts absolutely participated in spreading the idea that teenage girls were suddenly transgender.
00:06:56.000Now they're spreading the idea that they all have trauma.
00:06:59.000And that's why in schools, they're doing social emotional learning.
00:07:02.000The idea is you have to learn to emotionally regulate in a class.
00:07:06.000What I did was I looked at this actual psychological research and the whole and the actual psychological research is if you wanted to make kids sadder, more anxious, and have less efficacy, less sense that they could do for themselves, you couldn't design a program better than what's going on in schools today, where the kids are constantly directed to sit around and talk about their bad feelings, focus on their bad experiences and dwell.
00:07:31.000That's exactly the number one symptom of depression.
00:07:47.000It's absolutely true and it's totally unhealthy.
00:07:50.000Sitting around and thinking about yourself is the worst thing we could be leading kids to do every day.
00:07:56.000And people always ask me what would be better than social-emotional learning, which has many, I mean, the proven track record at this point of making kids sadder and more depressed and more anxious.
00:08:06.000What can we do that's better than that?
00:08:08.000And I say to them, literally anything.
00:08:10.000Have them paint the gym, pick up trash around the school.
00:08:14.000They could do any activity that isn't sitting around thinking about themselves, and it would be better than this.
00:08:20.000Yeah, it's all that idea of what you ought to do to serve and this inward-facing trend.
00:08:27.000Now, you mentioned something that I want to pinpoint.
00:08:29.000I have no idea what you feel about this, but you mentioned in kind of a string of ineffective therapies.
00:08:34.000I have no problem with mindfulness or meditation.
00:08:57.000What I want people to know is that adults who go into any form of therapy or mindfulness or whatever, who have developed their own views of the world, their own sense of what they can handle, it's a totally different experience.
00:09:09.000If an adult wants to see a therapist once a week and just have a non-judgmental space to talk about problems, by all means, they should do it.
00:09:17.000But what I want parents to know is when you take a child and sign them up for therapy of any sort, they are not in a position to say, listen, I know my mom shouldn't have yelled at me, but I don't think I'd call it emotionally abusive.
00:09:29.000I don't think I would call my parents toxic.
00:09:32.000They're not in a position to know those things.
00:09:34.000And so we're seeing things like family alienation at very high rates.
00:09:39.000And we're also seeing therapists convince kids or teachers acting as therapists that they've had trauma.
00:09:54.000It's the most suicidal, depressed, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation history.
00:10:00.000And then the therapy you'd think would be somewhat effective.
00:10:03.000Not only do you have an issue of diagnosing and people that actually might not have these issues then think they have those issues and it spreads, but then what we do to actually treat them isn't working either.
00:10:13.000I want to encourage you to check out Dr. Abigail Schreier's both of her books.
00:10:19.000They're so well written, so well researched.
00:10:21.000Bad Therapy, Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up by Abigail Schreier, and also Irreversible Damage, which I believe was one of the most important pieces of literature to add reason to the transgender insanity that is enveloping the country.
00:10:38.000It's not a question if something is coming, it's when.
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00:11:55.000So, let me just say, if you have a kid and you cannot stabilize the kid any other way, by all means, they may need therapy and they may need even these different medications.
00:12:05.000If they're, you know, if you have a child who's anorexic, I'm not saying there's never a place for therapy.
00:12:10.000Sometimes it's essential and even life-saving.
00:12:13.000But you have to start that we have to reset our default settings.
00:12:17.000So, the default shouldn't be to run to therapy and drugs because they can introduce risks of their own.
00:12:24.000Even therapy introduces a known body of research, you know, well-researched risks like increasing anxiety, increasing depression, alienation from family members, and undermining a person's sense of efficacy that they can do in this world on their own without checking in with a shrink.
00:12:42.000So, all those are classic side effects.
00:12:44.000Now, the drugs, what are the problems with the drugs with kids?
00:12:48.000So, every one of these is a different category, as you mentioned, and they all come with different risks.
00:13:31.000It has, you have to worry about things like addiction.
00:13:34.000It tends to work less well over time, meaning you'll need to up the dose to get the same effect.
00:13:39.000And of course, maybe the worst part about it is a kid who is inattentive in school, but is left alone without unmedicated may learn to cope in various ways, like finding out what he's actually more interested in.
00:13:52.000If you never even let them sit with that or try other things, you never know what the kid can overcome on his own.
00:13:59.000And he'll always feel that he needs a drug to handle life.
00:15:27.000We just don't know, but it seems to be for adolescents.
00:15:31.000The problem with SSRI is that with all the side effects and the weight gain and the whatever, suicidality, all the big risks, the biggest thing is you're putting a kid in an emotional snowsuit when he's just developing the musculature to his own life.
00:15:46.000A kid going through adolescence, that is a hard time.
00:15:50.000But if you never give them the shot of handling that life on their own, handling heartache and disappointment and some amount of failure, which we've all lived through and overcome, they may never feel that they can do it on their own.
00:16:04.000And that in some sense is the biggest tragedy of all.
00:16:08.000I mean, look, you can also talk about the benzos, which are their own, you know, problems.
00:16:16.000I mean, those are used to largely sedate people and just calm down, you know, hospital patients sometimes that have major issues with tremors and so forth.
00:16:26.000Yeah, benzos, I mean, they're highly addictive, as we know from the Jordan Peterson experience.
00:16:32.000But the other thing is anxiety, depression, these things exist for a reason, believe it or not.
00:16:38.000Now, I'm not saying if you have absolutely pathological anxiety and it's ruining your life, don't do anything about it.
00:16:52.000The reason we remember our first kiss is maybe because of the anxiety that preceded it.
00:16:57.000So there are very good reasons for these emotions and these feelings that we have.
00:17:01.000Depression, by the way, you go through a period of depression.
00:17:05.000Sometimes that may help you make a change in your life that needs to be made.
00:17:09.000If you go in there and delete that feeling, you may never have the will to make an important life change.
00:17:15.000So, you know, I'm not saying there's no place for them, but before we go in and do these radical things with our kids, we really ought to at least try to alter their environment and turn their lives upside down to give them a healthier environment.
00:17:29.000And they're also, so let's talk about the medical side of this.
00:17:40.000A team of researchers that I, you know, to quote in the book, and I interviewed several of them, they figured this out and they called it the treatment prevalence paradox when it comes to depression.
00:17:50.000Across the Western world, we have been increasing prevalence of treatment.
00:17:56.000Sorry, prevalence of the disease of depression has gone up with the increase in treatment.
00:18:01.000There's greater access and awareness of depression than ever, and yet our treatments are clearly not working.
00:18:08.000I argue that they're actually counterproductive, but they're clearly not working.
00:18:12.000All this talk about mental health, you need to be focusing on your mental health, thinking about your mental health, thinking about your feelings.
00:18:19.000It's the opposite of what we should be doing with kids.
00:18:22.000Yeah, it's just the, is there a pill-pushing agenda?
00:18:44.000I've seen some statistics and sometimes it's self-reporting and it's not clear how accurate they are.
00:18:49.000What I can tell you is that, you know, it's not only gone up tremendously in the last few years, but the FDA just last year approved Lexapro.
00:18:58.000This is a very strong SSRI for seven-year-olds.
00:19:01.000So you see how we're starting to do that.
00:19:05.000We do not quite understand how these drugs work.
00:19:08.000And for a seven-year-old, that is just unbelievable to me.
00:19:14.000So we're putting very, very young kids on major antidepressants and they're never going to know what it's what.
00:19:21.000And we're seeing in college what we would expect, right?
00:19:24.000Which is kids having basically nervous breakdowns over the slightest challenge, like being rejected by a friend or whatever, that sends these kids into a world of pain because they've never had to deal with it on their own.
00:19:38.000Is there anything in your research of bad therapy that gives you hope?
00:19:57.000I wrote the book to give them all the ammunition they need to push back on the schools and push back on the mental health experts and take back the reins of raising their own kids.
00:21:11.000So, Abigail, I want to talk about your book, Irreversible Damage.
00:21:15.000When you first started to research that topic, did you have any idea first the impact or the backlash you would receive and also the shelf life?
00:21:24.000I mean, it is four years later, and we're still talking about it.
00:21:26.000Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know with a book.
00:21:30.000I had some indication that, you know, it would upset people to give parents the truth about what these interventions involved from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones.
00:21:43.000But because Amazon right away would barred my publisher from even placing ads.
00:21:49.000We were told in advance of publication that there would be no ads for me.
00:21:54.000But I didn't expect the general giant societal backlash that I got, I guess, from, I shouldn't say societal, really from the mainstream institutions.
00:22:06.000So the ACLU came out in favor of banning my book.
00:22:10.000Libraries still to this day, most American libraries refuse to carry it.
00:22:14.000Even when people will donate to the library, a library will refuse it.
00:22:19.000So there was a campaign to advertise my book.
00:22:21.000People, you know, dug into their own pockets to pay for ads to advertise the book.
00:22:57.000But on the cover, it says the craze seducing our girls.
00:23:03.000It's specific towards young ladies, which we see with girls are actually far more susceptible to fall under the spell of this social contagion than boys.
00:23:21.000That means they tend to talk about their pain together as a way of bonding.
00:23:26.000And what that means is when you're co-ruminating with another girl, when you're taking on their pain, that's why social contagions spread among girls so often.
00:23:36.000A boy, if a boy says to his friend, I feel depressed, the friend might say, let's go play basketball.
00:23:42.000But a girl will say, tell me about it.
00:24:26.000I mean, they shut down the clinic in England based on the, you know, exactly what the problems that I warned about in the book, the medical, the lack of oversight, the dangers of things like puberty blockers, the dangers of cross-sex hormones for kids, the complete lack of oversight of girls who are making this decision based on a tough time in adolescence, not based on any medical need, and the lack of indication that this prevents suicide, which was one of the many lies the activists told over and over.
00:25:01.000There wasn't proof that gender, you know, transgender identification was a, you know, a reason for feeling suicidal, nor that it was the medications were the, you know, I shouldn't even call them net medications, the treatments, which were really reckless.
00:25:15.000There was no proof that they cured suicidality.
00:25:17.000So these were really dangerous and reckless interventions.
00:25:22.000And today across Europe, they're curtailing their use because of a lot of the risks I warned about.
00:25:55.000So it starts with a therapist who very often parents sent a young girl to a therapist.
00:26:01.000And this is what sort of made me think about my second book is that, you know, very often they were sent to a therapist for anxiety or depression, not for gender dysphoria, nothing to do with gender.
00:26:11.000And they took their, you know, 11, 12 year old and decided she was high anxiety and maybe she needed to see a therapist or maybe she should talk to the school counselor.
00:26:21.000And very often together with that counselor or mental health professional, the girl decided her problem was gender.
00:26:27.000She decided she had gender dysphoria and the therapist immediately affirmed.
00:26:32.000Now, there are conversion therapy bans in most states, which prohibit a therapist from disagreeing with the child's self-diagnosis.
00:26:43.000But very often, you know, the therapist did encourage the young person down that path.
00:26:48.000And unfortunately, from there, it's very easy, even without parental approval, to start hormones and surgeries.
00:26:56.000So in these states where there's a conversion therapy ban, the doctor's not allowed to do their job.
00:27:01.000That's basically, I mean, if somebody comes in and they, for example, and they say, you know, I'm anorexic and I think that I'm 500 pounds and I'm going to go fast myself for the next month.
00:27:14.000And the doctor's like, no, it's obviously you're anorexic.
00:27:17.000Is the doctor allowed to tell that patient they're wrong?
00:27:27.000And look, across the political spectrum, you'll find that legislators voted for it, these bans.
00:27:33.000It's not like it was, you know, one only one political side because it was sold under the idea that all they were banning was gay conversion therapy, which had had a really ugly history of methods that didn't work and were very cruel.
00:27:48.000So then they said, oh, we're just banning that, but they slipped in gender identity language.
00:27:54.000So now if you tried to convince a girl, you're not a boy, you're just having a hard time in middle school, that could run afoul.
00:28:02.000They could argue of the conversion therapy ban.
00:28:05.000They could argue that you were trying to convert a transgender child after being out of being transgender.
00:28:11.000So explain to me, where did we all of a sudden have a divergence where people doctors affirm and not challenge in a clinical environment?
00:28:23.000Isn't it the role of the physician to cure or to treat, not to affirm the ailment, especially when it comes to psychotherapy?
00:28:57.000An adult, a child is strong-armed by an adult into therapy.
00:29:00.000So they show up and they're not necessarily ready to work on a problem.
00:29:05.000It's a problem that the parents have identified.
00:29:08.000So a therapist is put in a position of needing to pander to the kid to get their buy-in.
00:29:13.000And very often that looks like affirmation, whether that's exaggerating your trauma of having a pet die or exaggerating the idea that you might really be a boy.
00:29:23.000So in addition, Abigail, can you talk about how originally in the DSM, this was considered to be a mental health problem, but it is no longer in the sense where it's not considered a mental illness.
00:29:38.000I don't really even know how they categorize it, but you're not allowed to say that, oh, this person has something wrong with them.
00:29:45.000The problem is how we're treating that individual.
00:30:15.000But then they go around, they sort of, the activists make a lot of headway between moving between, you know, what's actually the codes that you give insurance and what it's actually called and claiming it, no, it's a social identity and it's a minority group.
00:30:32.000And therefore, you can never insult a minority group.
00:30:35.000Well, of course, you shouldn't want to stigmatize a mental disorder.
00:30:38.000There's no reason to make people feel bad.
00:30:41.000But they sort of switch between, oh, this is a disorder that needs treatment and this is a beautiful sexual identity we should all affirm and celebrate.
00:30:51.000So the activists tend to slip between the two and they do it for very good reason.
00:31:08.000And so Abigail, let's talk about this.
00:31:10.000In the last couple of years, we've seen a furtherance of the surgical interventions and talk about how a young girl could be going to see a therapist at age 13 for anxiety and she could end up on the operating table.
00:31:23.000Is there a profit motive to get her through that conveyor belt?
00:31:28.000Yeah, I mean, you're talking about someone who's going to become a lifetime patient.
00:31:33.000Yes, but I don't tend to think the activists are largely motivated by profit specifically.
00:31:38.000Some of them may be, but generally, they have bought into this ideology, this very pernicious mind virus that any child can be a boy or a girl, depending on their say-so, without any evidence.
00:31:51.000And my job is to do this life-saving work of encouraging them on this path.
00:31:59.000In the state of California, where I live, minors age 12 and up have the right to this gender-affirming care, the supposedly gender-affirmed care without parental knowledge or say or agreement.
00:32:11.000And it's very easy in various states to get to start even with surgeries without parental permission at age 15 and up.
00:32:19.000So, you're talking about a situation in which the activists and the activist medical establishment and the gender world has convinced doctors and others that this is an issue between a young child and her therapist or physician, and that they're allowed to go in and make these life-altering changes to her body without really any good reason, even a good, even good medical necessity.
00:32:47.000So, they're doing a tremendous amount of damage.
00:32:50.000And I'm just very, very happy that America has really woken up to it.
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00:34:00.000The American people are waking up to this transgender craze.
00:34:05.000And if you check out the book Irreversible Damage and you work through it, you realize that at the root of this is a craze and a social contagion.
00:34:14.000So, Abigail, what would you say is the parents' role here versus the political and the societal role?
00:34:22.000And for parents that are listening for the first time, and we have several, we have a very big audience of parents, how should they prepare their children for encountering this craze?
00:35:17.000There's an army of activists, including maybe teachers your kids will see, who can't wait to tell your kids what they believe.
00:35:24.000So, you have to start by telling kids what you believe is true and what you know to be true before they get hit with all the nonsense, either in school or eventually college campus.
00:35:35.000And then the last thing I would just say is: don't let these interlopers insert themselves between you and your kid.
00:35:41.000Unless you absolutely need a therapist or a mental health professional, do not insert them between you and your child unless they absolutely need it.
00:35:49.000And if they absolutely need mental health interventions, then research the therapist like you would any surgeon.
00:35:56.000In addition, there's been a 5,000% increase in the amount of trans identifying youth.
00:36:03.000We have seen that with proper parenting, cutting off the internet, changing passwords on phones, getting different friends groups, sometimes even moving, the trans identification just kind of fades out.
00:36:16.000That puberty is not the problem, but puberty is the solution.
00:36:22.000Another thing that I always tell parents to do is remove for sure, get them off social media where they sit and they saturate in this identity.
00:36:30.000You know, social media is no doubt a big problem, and it's a big vector of communicating all of these ideas from I have trauma to I'm really a boy.
00:36:40.000I mean, it's communicating a lot of bad values and it's putting your kids in touch with a lot of bad people too.
00:36:46.000So there's no question it has played a really ugly role.
00:36:50.000But, you know, I interviewed this dad after my book came out.
00:36:53.000And, you know, this is sort of a classic story.