4 ms·

Teens Got Therapy. Then They Got Worse

11 points by kelseyfrog 3y ago

kelseyfrog 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231106125822/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/teen-mental-health-dbt/675895/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231106125822/https://www.theat...
sillywalk 3y ago
Maybe it's possible that depression and anxiety are normal things to feel in our dystopian world.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  No - it's the children who are wrong. Why aren't they excited to be the raw materials fed into a capitalist meat-grinder?
_def 3y ago
> It feels like we should be able to just sit the teens down and tell them how to be happier. But that doesn’t seem to work, and sometimes it even backfires. Sorry but I feel this article is written by a person with many misconceptions about psychotherapy. > Immediately after the intervention, the therapy group had worse relationships with their parents and increases in depression and anxiety. Most of these negative effects dissipated after a few months, but six months later, the therapy group was still reporting poorer relationships with their parents. This doesn't surprise me at all, as a) it is well known that conflicts with your environment can arise when your behavior and your values change (after all people are used to how things/you are) and b) probably lots of problems come from their parenthood in the first place - if you learn that certain things aren't how they are supposed to be and you can't change any of that because you still have to deal with your parents (who might exert some (perceived) dysfunctional force over you), of course that makes things worse. Last but not least, it's a flowery phrase but still holds true when talking about therapy I think: it gets worse before it gets better. Effective psychotherapy makes you question your believes about life and yourself, of course that doesn't feel great when the earth is shaking. But that's what therapists are there for: to guide and support you through the process. It can be difficult for people outside (e.g. parents) to grasp what's going on there, especially if they don't have similar experiences.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  The “dysfunctional force” feels like it could be a situation being unintentionally selected for here. Since they’re teens, most of their issues/trauma is probably related to things their parents are doing. Realizing your parents are narcissists or something is going to be helpful in the long term, but probably going to cause more conflict in the mean time. I’m not sure how it would be to understand your parents shortcomings while still living with them, but I can imagine it would result in some heavy resentment and probably depression.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hgs3 3y ago
Are the teens actually depressed or are they demoralized? There is a difference between the two.
- kbelder 3y ago
  It is socially unacceptable to suggest that a person may not be actually depressed.
nonpracticing 3y ago
It seems to me that the fatal flaw in this study was that DBT is designed to work with a specific set of symptoms (or diagnosis) It is not a generic mental health curriculum. So while assigning kids randomly to these two groups sounds like a good way to see whether a given strategy works--it's not. The authors of the article acknowledge that the kids who did the homework did better. Well that's because the homework is the key to success, to generalizing skills. Guessing on a study that seems this flawed is also dumb, but it would not be unreasonable to hypothesize that the kids who did the homework were the ones who saw the benefit to their specific issues.

11 points by kelseyfrog 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231106125822/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/teen-mental-health-dbt/675895/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231106125822/https://www.theat...

sillywalk 3y ago

Maybe it's possible that depression and anxiety are normal things to feel in our dystopian world.

hotpotamus 3y ago
No - it's the children who are wrong. Why aren't they excited to be the raw materials fed into a capitalist meat-grinder?

_def 3y ago

> It feels like we should be able to just sit the teens down and tell them how to be happier. But that doesn’t seem to work, and sometimes it even backfires. Sorry but I feel this article is written by a person with many misconceptions about psychotherapy. > Immediately after the intervention, the therapy group had worse relationships with their parents and increases in depression and anxiety. Most of these negative effects dissipated after a few months, but six months later, the therapy group was still reporting poorer relationships with their parents. This doesn't surprise me at all, as a) it is well known that conflicts with your environment can arise when your behavior and your values change (after all people are used to how things/you are) and b) probably lots of problems come from their parenthood in the first place - if you learn that certain things aren't how they are supposed to be and you can't change any of that because you still have to deal with your parents (who might exert some (perceived) dysfunctional force over you), of course that makes things worse. Last but not least, it's a flowery phrase but still holds true when talking about therapy I think: it gets worse before it gets better. Effective psychotherapy makes you question your believes about life and yourself, of course that doesn't feel great when the earth is shaking. But that's what therapists are there for: to guide and support you through the process. It can be difficult for people outside (e.g. parents) to grasp what's going on there, especially if they don't have similar experiences.

abracadaniel 3y ago
The “dysfunctional force” feels like it could be a situation being unintentionally selected for here. Since they’re teens, most of their issues/trauma is probably related to things their parents are doing. Realizing your parents are narcissists or something is going to be helpful in the long term, but probably going to cause more conflict in the mean time. I’m not sure how it would be to understand your parents shortcomings while still living with them, but I can imagine it would result in some heavy resentment and probably depression.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hgs3 3y ago

Are the teens actually depressed or are they demoralized? There is a difference between the two.

kbelder 3y ago
It is socially unacceptable to suggest that a person may not be actually depressed.

nonpracticing 3y ago

It seems to me that the fatal flaw in this study was that DBT is designed to work with a specific set of symptoms (or diagnosis) It is not a generic mental health curriculum. So while assigning kids randomly to these two groups sounds like a good way to see whether a given strategy works--it's not. The authors of the article acknowledge that the kids who did the homework did better. Well that's because the homework is the key to success, to generalizing skills. Guessing on a study that seems this flawed is also dumb, but it would not be unreasonable to hypothesize that the kids who did the homework were the ones who saw the benefit to their specific issues.