Do schools talk about mental health too much? Are mental health surveys intrusive on students’s personal lives?
In Bad Therapy, Abigail Shrier says that schools can contribute to unnecessary mental health treatment that harms children. According to Shrier, schools focus too much on students’s mental health by encouraging them to share feelings and make excessive accommodations.
Continue reading to learn the different ways mental health awareness in schools is hurting children.
The Overemphasis on Mental Health in Schools
Despite lacking proper training or guidelines, teachers and staff routinely encourage students to share personal feelings in class, suggest mental health diagnoses like ADHD, and provide excessive accommodations. In the following sections, we’ll discuss the effects of mental health awareness in schools on students.
(Shortform note: The Covid-19 pandemic, which worsened children’s mental health, prompted 38 states to pass nearly 100 laws for improving mental health services in schools. These laws aim to ensure that school mental health programs are properly implemented. For example, Virginia now requires school counselors to receive specific training in mental health disorders, depression, trauma, and youth suicide before they can be licensed. Other states like Connecticut and Florida have created protocols for how schools should respond to student mental health crises. These structured approaches suggest that schools are working on developing more professional and systematic ways to support student mental health.)
Mental Health Programs and Surveys
Shrier writes that many schools have implemented mental health programs like social-emotional learning (SEL), which have students share feelings and personal experiences in class. While schools intend for these to teach students emotional awareness and empathy, they disrupt learning by having students repeatedly discuss their anxieties and personal problems during academic time. Listening to and talking about negative emotions can leave students feeling distressed and make it harder for them to concentrate on their academic subjects.
(Shortform note: Research supports Shrier’s argument that mental health programs can potentially worsen mental health in students. In one study, students who participated in mindfulness training and emotional awareness programs reported feeling worse afterward, not better. Researchers theorize that the programs made students more aware of their difficult emotions without giving them effective tools to handle them. They add that group discussions can specifically backfire by causing students to engage in co-rumination—talking about problems without finding solutions, which can make students feel worse about those problems.)
Many schools also administer surveys that ask questions about mental health, family life, drug use, sexual activity, and other sensitive topics. Shrier argues these surveys are intrusive, inappropriate for children, and may actually introduce or normalize risky behaviors by asking about them. Additionally, in many states, schools aren’t required to inform parents when students receive counseling services. This means children may be discussing personal issues with school staff without parents’ knowledge.
(Shortform note: Some experts argue that mental health screenings in schools are essential tools for early identification, which allows students to connect with help before problems become severe. They say there’s a critical two- to four-year window between when mental health symptoms first appear and when they develop into serious disorders—a period when prevention programs could make the biggest difference.)
Excessive Accommodations
Schools have long provided special accommodations to help struggling students succeed. But Shrier argues that schools now bend over backward to accommodate nearly every student request, a practice that undermines independence and academic performance. Shrier discusses three accommodations that she considers damaging:
1) Academic accommodations: Teachers liberally make modifications to academic standards, even for students without formal diagnoses, by accepting late work, giving extra time on tests, and allowing students to leave class if anxious. While some students face genuine trauma, schools now label common challenges like having divorced parents as traumatic. This leads educators to treat typical students as psychologically damaged and unable to meet basic expectations. Shrier contends that this mindset particularly harms disadvantaged students who need high standards and accountability to succeed.
2) Student aides: Schools increasingly assign aides to follow and help individual students throughout the day. While these helpers originally supported students with severe disabilities, schools now assign them to students for minor behavioral issues. Having a constantly monitoring shadow can make students more dependent on adults and deprive them of opportunities to learn to deal with situations independently.
3) Restorative justice: Many schools have replaced traditional discipline with restorative justice, where students who misbehave participate in group discussions about their feelings rather than face punishment. Shrier argues that this approach fails to prevent violence and actually hurts victims by forcing them to confront their attackers. By treating all misbehavior as a mental health issue requiring therapy instead of discipline, schools have lost the ability to maintain order. According to the teachers Shrier interviewed, restorative justice has led to more behavioral problems and school violence.
