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Paper says that for some kids, CBT and mindfulness can increase negative symptoms, or have no effect. Not surprising, because they don't address the fundamenta

Paper says that for some kids, CBT and mindfulness can increase negative symptoms, or have no effect. Not surprising, because they don't address the fundamental issues. Why would mindfulness help with depression, better than teaching these kids how to grieve in an effective, healthy way? CBT can be helpful, but it 'intellectualizes' problems too much. How about teaching these kids how to increase their self-confidence? How to identify their emotional needs? How to build their social skills, resolve conflicts in relationships, and assert their personal boundaries? Most sure aren't learning that from their parents. These interventions are far too superficial to obtain the intended results. I'll be pointlessly provocative now: they almost seem intended so that teachers/interveners can avoid having to deal head-on, one-on-one, with their students' "messy" emotions. No need for school adults to have empathic, difficult conversations with kids whose parents are undergoing a divorce. Instead, just teach the kids (as a group) how to intellectualize their emotions, or distance themselves from them. It minimizes the role of teachers and other trusted adults as a social support system, it places the onus on kids to "fix themselves", and it downplays the importance of emotions in causing these problems in the first place. It makes things very impersonal. Imagine if sex-ed classes were founded on Victorian notions of decency, would they be of any help? It concerns me that so many intelligent, thoughtful scientists are barking up the wrong trees. If they refocused their efforts, they could be far more effective.

deleted 4y ago
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narwally 4y ago
> CBT can be helpful, but it 'intellectualizes' problems too much. How about teaching these kids how to increase their self-confidence? How to identify their emotional needs? How to build their social skills, resolve conflicts in relationships, and assert their personal boundaries? Most sure aren't learning that from their parents. All the things you listed are already directly addressed within CBT.
- concinds 4y ago
  I received CBT, and that's not my experience. Learning the thought patterns involved in these behaviors is different from learning the underlying skills needed to improve those behaviors. Just like reflecting on the thought patterns behind piano-playing won't help me play the piano. It might help me improve the way I practice, but it doesn't teach me what to do with the keys. And CBT frames emotions as being caused by thought-patterns, when the causality is not quite that "clean". I'm not rejecting CBT's usefulness. It's a good tool. But I found it better at improving symptom management than at addressing underlying problems.
  - drowsspa 4y ago
    Interesting. I've been doing psychoanalysis for over a year now, and I have similar complaints: I know exactly what went wrong with my life but I have no idea WTF to do with it. It's like I'm just picking the wounds
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      Aside from the dollars spent on therapy, is that outcome worse than being confused about why you are suffering? Or thinking that god or society just hates you? At least in some cases, it could lead to positive change, at least as a warning to others.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    Other than incredibly vague non-existent definition of what Mindfulness is, it attempts to frame the thought patterns that lead to emotional distress as inherently being the problem themselves. Most of us have thought patterns because we experience the world around us. Our actual experience of the world might as well just be our thought patterns. If those thought patterns lead to negative thoughts, that doesn't imply I am inherently the problem. Mindfulness chooses a line and tells the patient it's their problem to deal with. It's merely convenient (and profitable) that we are as individuals able to affect our own thoughts to a significant degree. It is a course in training you to deal with the pain of your own self-awareness without requiring an actual change to those conditions. If mindfulness told us our job was to affect actual change in our world, it'd be nothing more than a completely irrelevant set of practices.
civilized 4y ago
At the end of the day, therapy is just an attempt to help someone with a problem. I think we've all experienced a well-intentioned person who made things worse, and it shouldn't be surprising that someone attempting to follow a formula like CBT or DBT or ACT or whatever, might still be the opposite of helpful. I like and have benefitted from some of these frameworks, but none of them is a silver bullet.
jvanderbot 4y ago
> How about teaching these kids how to increase their self-confidence? How to identify their emotional needs? How to build their social skills, resolve conflicts in relationships, and assert their personal boundaries? Most sure aren't learning that from their parents. Well, I'd say that based on what I know about CBT and mindfulness, both of those are well supported methods for accomplishing all that, CBT especially because of its emphasis on reframing situations and recognizing negative thought patterns. On a personal level I find positive reframing to be a super power that CBT and others reinforce. It's helped me with all kinds of problems.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  Mindfulness frankly doesn't help a student with things like being bullied/harassed, having a bad home life, or food/shelter insecurity. Reframing helps in thinking about specific situations but, frankly, teenagers aren't equipped legally or otherwise to handle things themselves.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    That definitely is a different goalpost then the one I was talking about. Absolutely, additional strategies will be required there.
    - maroonblazer 4y ago
      It's not clear from the paper what the goalpost even is. They refer to mental health issues but don't give any concrete examples. The most specific they get is depression and anxiety; but aren't depression and anxiety symptoms of underlying problems?
bordercases 4y ago
Yes, and the steps required to get to the equilibria would involve working on the entire system to orbit around emotional growth next to intellectual growth while children have immature development in both. Why? Because both parents and teachers have more load than they can bear with kids already which also strains their ability to give emotional availability to the deeply irrational stage of being a human being with little intellectual capacity developed to cope. I'd rather that instead of accusing "scientists" (which?) of being worthy of deep concern when you yourself have not taken into consideration this context as if the authorities in question are purely malicious.
AussieWog93 4y ago
>Imagine if sex-ed classes were founded on Victorian notions of decency, would they be of any help? Fun fact: abstinence-only sex education actually increases the rate of teen pregnancies, not just compared to comprehensive sex ed but to no sex ed at all.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  It’s because we don’t follow it up with shunning and shame if a pregnancy occurs. Essentially cancel culture Victorian style. So of course if you tell kids not to fuck and they have a million outlets to help burden the consequence then it’s a non-functional system not in coherence with todays reality. Living in the past is useless. But it doesn’t mean the values of the past are bad. Just incompatible with modern society.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    Judging by rates of illegitimate pregnancy and birth as reflected in prosecutions of same before and during the Victorian era, those values were incompatible with the society of their own time, too. Odd that never seems to noticeably deter the "forward into the past!" crowd from no-true-Scotsmaning their favored social prescriptions every bit as loudly as the most ardent communist handwaves Stalin.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      It’s on a completely different level today and it’s not even close. How many babies are born out of wedlock? Now multiply that by a huge number to get the number aborted. It’s massively different than it was. Rates too I’m sure. Sex without consequences has been the siren song of the last 60+ years and for good reason if you take care. And I didn’t say it’s a solution because it’s not. It’s good advice for various reasons but it needs to be supplemented with lots of knowledge on how to protect yourself too.
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        > How many babies are born out of wedlock? Your argument would be better[1] if you supplied the numbers instead of assuming them and then arguing from the consequence. 1. ie: work
giantg2 4y ago
"These interventions are far too superficial to obtain the intended results." In my limited and probably too absolute opinion (there's more nuance than what I have here), schools seem to either be about checking boxes to say "see we did everything!" or have some naive administration with a savior complex. Most people don't care about getting to the root issues, or are blinded by their biases. I feel like there's no real community left and no real hope for many. It's hard to give a damn about the future when you know your's is fucked but everyone is still putting on the pressure to be successful.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

narwally 4y ago

> CBT can be helpful, but it 'intellectualizes' problems too much. How about teaching these kids how to increase their self-confidence? How to identify their emotional needs? How to build their social skills, resolve conflicts in relationships, and assert their personal boundaries? Most sure aren't learning that from their parents. All the things you listed are already directly addressed within CBT.

concinds 4y ago
I received CBT, and that's not my experience. Learning the thought patterns involved in these behaviors is different from learning the underlying skills needed to improve those behaviors. Just like reflecting on the thought patterns behind piano-playing won't help me play the piano. It might help me improve the way I practice, but it doesn't teach me what to do with the keys. And CBT frames emotions as being caused by thought-patterns, when the causality is not quite that "clean". I'm not rejecting CBT's usefulness. It's a good tool. But I found it better at improving symptom management than at addressing underlying problems.
- drowsspa 4y ago
  Interesting. I've been doing psychoanalysis for over a year now, and I have similar complaints: I know exactly what went wrong with my life but I have no idea WTF to do with it. It's like I'm just picking the wounds
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Aside from the dollars spent on therapy, is that outcome worse than being confused about why you are suffering? Or thinking that god or society just hates you? At least in some cases, it could lead to positive change, at least as a warning to others.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Other than incredibly vague non-existent definition of what Mindfulness is, it attempts to frame the thought patterns that lead to emotional distress as inherently being the problem themselves. Most of us have thought patterns because we experience the world around us. Our actual experience of the world might as well just be our thought patterns. If those thought patterns lead to negative thoughts, that doesn't imply I am inherently the problem. Mindfulness chooses a line and tells the patient it's their problem to deal with. It's merely convenient (and profitable) that we are as individuals able to affect our own thoughts to a significant degree. It is a course in training you to deal with the pain of your own self-awareness without requiring an actual change to those conditions. If mindfulness told us our job was to affect actual change in our world, it'd be nothing more than a completely irrelevant set of practices.

civilized 4y ago

At the end of the day, therapy is just an attempt to help someone with a problem. I think we've all experienced a well-intentioned person who made things worse, and it shouldn't be surprising that someone attempting to follow a formula like CBT or DBT or ACT or whatever, might still be the opposite of helpful. I like and have benefitted from some of these frameworks, but none of them is a silver bullet.

jvanderbot 4y ago

> How about teaching these kids how to increase their self-confidence? How to identify their emotional needs? How to build their social skills, resolve conflicts in relationships, and assert their personal boundaries? Most sure aren't learning that from their parents. Well, I'd say that based on what I know about CBT and mindfulness, both of those are well supported methods for accomplishing all that, CBT especially because of its emphasis on reframing situations and recognizing negative thought patterns. On a personal level I find positive reframing to be a super power that CBT and others reinforce. It's helped me with all kinds of problems.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
Mindfulness frankly doesn't help a student with things like being bullied/harassed, having a bad home life, or food/shelter insecurity. Reframing helps in thinking about specific situations but, frankly, teenagers aren't equipped legally or otherwise to handle things themselves.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  That definitely is a different goalpost then the one I was talking about. Absolutely, additional strategies will be required there.
  - maroonblazer 4y ago
    It's not clear from the paper what the goalpost even is. They refer to mental health issues but don't give any concrete examples. The most specific they get is depression and anxiety; but aren't depression and anxiety symptoms of underlying problems?

bordercases 4y ago

Yes, and the steps required to get to the equilibria would involve working on the entire system to orbit around emotional growth next to intellectual growth while children have immature development in both. Why? Because both parents and teachers have more load than they can bear with kids already which also strains their ability to give emotional availability to the deeply irrational stage of being a human being with little intellectual capacity developed to cope. I'd rather that instead of accusing "scientists" (which?) of being worthy of deep concern when you yourself have not taken into consideration this context as if the authorities in question are purely malicious.

AussieWog93 4y ago

>Imagine if sex-ed classes were founded on Victorian notions of decency, would they be of any help? Fun fact: abstinence-only sex education actually increases the rate of teen pregnancies, not just compared to comprehensive sex ed but to no sex ed at all.

nemo44x 4y ago
It’s because we don’t follow it up with shunning and shame if a pregnancy occurs. Essentially cancel culture Victorian style. So of course if you tell kids not to fuck and they have a million outlets to help burden the consequence then it’s a non-functional system not in coherence with todays reality. Living in the past is useless. But it doesn’t mean the values of the past are bad. Just incompatible with modern society.
- throwanem 4y ago
  Judging by rates of illegitimate pregnancy and birth as reflected in prosecutions of same before and during the Victorian era, those values were incompatible with the society of their own time, too. Odd that never seems to noticeably deter the "forward into the past!" crowd from no-true-Scotsmaning their favored social prescriptions every bit as loudly as the most ardent communist handwaves Stalin.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    It’s on a completely different level today and it’s not even close. How many babies are born out of wedlock? Now multiply that by a huge number to get the number aborted. It’s massively different than it was. Rates too I’m sure. Sex without consequences has been the siren song of the last 60+ years and for good reason if you take care. And I didn’t say it’s a solution because it’s not. It’s good advice for various reasons but it needs to be supplemented with lots of knowledge on how to protect yourself too.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      > How many babies are born out of wedlock? Your argument would be better[1] if you supplied the numbers instead of assuming them and then arguing from the consequence. 1. ie: work

giantg2 4y ago

"These interventions are far too superficial to obtain the intended results." In my limited and probably too absolute opinion (there's more nuance than what I have here), schools seem to either be about checking boxes to say "see we did everything!" or have some naive administration with a savior complex. Most people don't care about getting to the root issues, or are blinded by their biases. I feel like there's no real community left and no real hope for many. It's hard to give a damn about the future when you know your's is fucked but everyone is still putting on the pressure to be successful.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]