4 ms·

> However, studies also estimate that upward of 10% to 21% of children and adolescents struggle with an anxiety disorder and as many as 30% of children experien

by belval 4y ago

> However, studies also estimate that upward of 10% to 21% of children and adolescents struggle with an anxiety disorder and as many as 30% of children experience moderate anxiety that interferes with their daily functioning at some time in their life. Probably my toxic masculinity showing, but if 1 in 3 children has anxiety, then I'd chalk it up to "that's life". We cannot possibly offer therapy to that many children and medicating the problem away is a chilling suggestion.

themitigating 4y ago
Cancer is also "just life" yet affects much fewer than anxiety but we spend billions on it
- belval 4y ago
  Cancer is not "just life", you die from it. Not figuratively, you actually die from it. Anxiety is chronic, it's more like headaches or eczema. It still sucks to have it and some people have a very bad case that requires medication.
  - elil17 4y ago
    If we had a good cure (or even a mediocre cure) for mild headaches why would we not give that to every kid with headaches? Isn’t talk therapy (CBT/DBT/etc) that cute?
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I get that it's a large-scale project (assuming it is a real problem), but isn't it akin to saying, "this software is too buggy to improve. We should give up and live with the bugs instead?"
- belval 4y ago
  The cure can be worse than the disease, the software analogy is actually pretty good. > This software is too buggy to improve. We should give up and live with the bugs instead? 1. You can do a full costly rewrite, probably still end up with bugs because we don't have a real solution to inherent complexity. (we don't have a cure for anxiety) 2. You can target the few very bad bugs and fix those (helping the ~5% of children with crippling anxiety, let the "moderate" anxiety learn to live with it). Article is pointing towards doing 1, I think it's ridiculous and how we end with a significant proportion of kids on antidepressants.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    I agree; I don't think mass meditating children is a viable solution, but that's not the only solution. Anytime there is a pattern to bugs, I stop and think about the systemic changes that got us there in the first place. And that's what I'm advocating for here too.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > I don't think mass meditating children is a viable solution, That's actually probably a very good and cost effective solution to part of the problem, despite probably being a typo.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Article is pointing towards doing 1 No, it's not. > I think it's ridiculous and how we end with a significant proportion of kids on antidepressants. The most common treatment for diagnosable childhood anxiety seems to be talk therapy, not medication (and, anti-anxiety and anti-depreasant are different sets of drugs, anyway.)
elil17 4y ago
If therapy means “teaching kids how to cope with difficult things and calm down” then why not? Especially if offered via an app (many apps to teach CBT techniques are available and appropriate for mild anxiety) or in a group session, where it could be fairly economical.
- belval 4y ago
  I really meant giving each kid a therapist is not feasible. You can have a class on how to handle anxiety, I actually had those when I was in high school and it helped.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    We can't give each kid one-on-one tutoring[1] which would improve children's education by 2 standard deviations. Yet, we still teach kids in classrooms. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good(or better). 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
  - beardedetim 4y ago
    > giving each kid a therapist is not feasible. Why not? We expect a healthy child to have a doctor, a healthy child to have a friend group. Why not expect them to have a mental doctor/therapist?
    - leetcrew 4y ago
      very different models of care? if you have a doctor, the expectation is that you see them for a yearly checkup plus a few times for random illnesses. if you have a therapist, the expectation is that you see them every week or two. maybe there's value in occasionally seeing a therapist for a "mental health checkup", but weekly one-on-ones obviously doesn't scale to every single child.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > but weekly one-on-ones obviously doesn't scale to every single child. An appropriate course of treatment for each child with a diagnosable condition for which it is appropriate certainly does. Maybe weekly sessions 52 weeks a year, every year, for every child regardless of need doesn't, but why would you do that anyway?
dragonwriter 4y ago
> We cannot possibly offer therapy to that many children Why not? A 12-16 week course of CBT for even 20% of children, sometime during childhood (so about 1-2% of children per year) would be a rounding error in total healthcare expenditures. It would be a substantial increase in current mental health expenditure, and probably take a several years to get up to capacity for, but its not something radically impossible.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  A course might be counterproductive. In the 90s and 2000s, guidance counselors would show tapes concerning problems of the day: stranger danger, bullying, "negative" emotions, etc. Of course, none of those tapes solved the problems they addressed. If anything, many of them focused on the wrong problems or on symptoms rather than causes. If the source of one's anxieties isn't going to change (like one's neighborhood or family), no amount of coursework or medication is going to help. Exceptional circumstances notwithstanding, there is no way to psychologize, meditate, or drug a kid's problems away. There is no one-size-fits-all solution I might not have the solution to the problems themselves are, but the chances of proactive intervention damaging a child's life are much higher than if you left them alone. The last thing I would like to see coming back is mass institutionalization, and unfortunately these kinds best-intention suggestions become springboards for later abuses
Enginerrrd 4y ago
Interestingly enough, I'm not so sure this is the case. I've been mentally toying with the idea of an in-house pre-paid school psychologist and mandatory annual screenings for all students. We already do this for hearing and vision screening, and sometimes even dental screening and care. That or there are other ways to create intervention opportunities. There are many proven mental health therapeutic interventions that could be implemented in a classroom format. Lots of self-journaling to various prompts, etc. The class can focus on stress management strategies, organization, and other sorts of long term planning, reflection, conflict resolution and other life-success skills. Self-assessment quizzes could be administered to screen for depression, anxiety, dark-triad type stuff and then results evaluated by an actual psychologist with appropriate followup as needed. I just about guarantee that would do more to prevent school shootings than any gun control proposals on the table. For the amount we spend on schools to have school resource officers (like providing extra opportunities for students to have run-ins with the law is helpful?), and all the security and surveillance infrastructure, and ridiculous admin costs, I think it wouldn't be nearly as expensive as you might think.
- leetcrew 4y ago
  not a bad idea, although it basically sounds like a beefed-up version of the "school counselor" role. > Self-assessment quizzes could be administered to screen for depression, anxiety, dark-triad type stuff and then results evaluated by an actual psychologist with appropriate followup as needed. this part seems misguided. especially if administered through school, I suspect a lot of students would perceive this as an attempt to get them to "tell on" themselves. which it is, at least some of the time.
kar5pt 4y ago
It's not "life". It's the school-world that adults have constructed and forcibly inserted children into. It's hard to think of a single aspect of children's lives that isn't directly or indirectly created by adults.

by belval 4y ago

themitigating 4y ago

Cancer is also "just life" yet affects much fewer than anxiety but we spend billions on it

belval 4y ago
Cancer is not "just life", you die from it. Not figuratively, you actually die from it. Anxiety is chronic, it's more like headaches or eczema. It still sucks to have it and some people have a very bad case that requires medication.
- elil17 4y ago
  If we had a good cure (or even a mediocre cure) for mild headaches why would we not give that to every kid with headaches? Isn’t talk therapy (CBT/DBT/etc) that cute?

kelseyfrog 4y ago

I get that it's a large-scale project (assuming it is a real problem), but isn't it akin to saying, "this software is too buggy to improve. We should give up and live with the bugs instead?"

belval 4y ago
The cure can be worse than the disease, the software analogy is actually pretty good. > This software is too buggy to improve. We should give up and live with the bugs instead? 1. You can do a full costly rewrite, probably still end up with bugs because we don't have a real solution to inherent complexity. (we don't have a cure for anxiety) 2. You can target the few very bad bugs and fix those (helping the ~5% of children with crippling anxiety, let the "moderate" anxiety learn to live with it). Article is pointing towards doing 1, I think it's ridiculous and how we end with a significant proportion of kids on antidepressants.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  I agree; I don't think mass meditating children is a viable solution, but that's not the only solution. Anytime there is a pattern to bugs, I stop and think about the systemic changes that got us there in the first place. And that's what I'm advocating for here too.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > I don't think mass meditating children is a viable solution, That's actually probably a very good and cost effective solution to part of the problem, despite probably being a typo.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Article is pointing towards doing 1 No, it's not. > I think it's ridiculous and how we end with a significant proportion of kids on antidepressants. The most common treatment for diagnosable childhood anxiety seems to be talk therapy, not medication (and, anti-anxiety and anti-depreasant are different sets of drugs, anyway.)

elil17 4y ago

If therapy means “teaching kids how to cope with difficult things and calm down” then why not? Especially if offered via an app (many apps to teach CBT techniques are available and appropriate for mild anxiety) or in a group session, where it could be fairly economical.

belval 4y ago
I really meant giving each kid a therapist is not feasible. You can have a class on how to handle anxiety, I actually had those when I was in high school and it helped.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  We can't give each kid one-on-one tutoring[1] which would improve children's education by 2 standard deviations. Yet, we still teach kids in classrooms. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good(or better). 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
- beardedetim 4y ago
  > giving each kid a therapist is not feasible. Why not? We expect a healthy child to have a doctor, a healthy child to have a friend group. Why not expect them to have a mental doctor/therapist?
  - leetcrew 4y ago
    very different models of care? if you have a doctor, the expectation is that you see them for a yearly checkup plus a few times for random illnesses. if you have a therapist, the expectation is that you see them every week or two. maybe there's value in occasionally seeing a therapist for a "mental health checkup", but weekly one-on-ones obviously doesn't scale to every single child.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > but weekly one-on-ones obviously doesn't scale to every single child. An appropriate course of treatment for each child with a diagnosable condition for which it is appropriate certainly does. Maybe weekly sessions 52 weeks a year, every year, for every child regardless of need doesn't, but why would you do that anyway?

dragonwriter 4y ago

> We cannot possibly offer therapy to that many children Why not? A 12-16 week course of CBT for even 20% of children, sometime during childhood (so about 1-2% of children per year) would be a rounding error in total healthcare expenditures. It would be a substantial increase in current mental health expenditure, and probably take a several years to get up to capacity for, but its not something radically impossible.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
A course might be counterproductive. In the 90s and 2000s, guidance counselors would show tapes concerning problems of the day: stranger danger, bullying, "negative" emotions, etc. Of course, none of those tapes solved the problems they addressed. If anything, many of them focused on the wrong problems or on symptoms rather than causes. If the source of one's anxieties isn't going to change (like one's neighborhood or family), no amount of coursework or medication is going to help. Exceptional circumstances notwithstanding, there is no way to psychologize, meditate, or drug a kid's problems away. There is no one-size-fits-all solution I might not have the solution to the problems themselves are, but the chances of proactive intervention damaging a child's life are much higher than if you left them alone. The last thing I would like to see coming back is mass institutionalization, and unfortunately these kinds best-intention suggestions become springboards for later abuses

Enginerrrd 4y ago

Interestingly enough, I'm not so sure this is the case. I've been mentally toying with the idea of an in-house pre-paid school psychologist and mandatory annual screenings for all students. We already do this for hearing and vision screening, and sometimes even dental screening and care. That or there are other ways to create intervention opportunities. There are many proven mental health therapeutic interventions that could be implemented in a classroom format. Lots of self-journaling to various prompts, etc. The class can focus on stress management strategies, organization, and other sorts of long term planning, reflection, conflict resolution and other life-success skills. Self-assessment quizzes could be administered to screen for depression, anxiety, dark-triad type stuff and then results evaluated by an actual psychologist with appropriate followup as needed. I just about guarantee that would do more to prevent school shootings than any gun control proposals on the table. For the amount we spend on schools to have school resource officers (like providing extra opportunities for students to have run-ins with the law is helpful?), and all the security and surveillance infrastructure, and ridiculous admin costs, I think it wouldn't be nearly as expensive as you might think.

leetcrew 4y ago
not a bad idea, although it basically sounds like a beefed-up version of the "school counselor" role. > Self-assessment quizzes could be administered to screen for depression, anxiety, dark-triad type stuff and then results evaluated by an actual psychologist with appropriate followup as needed. this part seems misguided. especially if administered through school, I suspect a lot of students would perceive this as an attempt to get them to "tell on" themselves. which it is, at least some of the time.

kar5pt 4y ago

It's not "life". It's the school-world that adults have constructed and forcibly inserted children into. It's hard to think of a single aspect of children's lives that isn't directly or indirectly created by adults.