How the Mental Health Establishment Ruined the Mental Health of Children

Human beings have been raising children without professional advice for thousands of years. Any such advice came from the elders in one's family, church, or community. Why did we stop listening to our elders and begin listening to mental health professionals? Is there compelling evidence to the effect that children, as a group, have benefitted from professional parenting advice? No. There is, however, plenty of compelling and consistent evidence supporting the opposite conclusion, which is that professional parenting advice has been bad for the mental health of children and the functional health of families.

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Transcript

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Hey there, John Rosemond here. Welcome to because I said so the one and only podcast on the World Wide Web where you're going to learn the truth about psychology and the mental health professions in general, and reconnect with the simple, common sense of raising children. By the way, it's time for me to tell you that listening to this podcast is not going to require a lot of your valuable time. Quite purposefully, I'm keeping each episode somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes give or take. I ended last week's episode by pointing out that around 1970, a little over 50 years ago, American parents and maths began looking to psychologists and other mental health professional types per child rearing advice, and I asked, how's that worked out? We're going to pick up from there. And by the way, you don't have to, it's not absolutely necessary. But if you are so inspired, go back and listen to last week's episode. So consider this no people group at any time in the history of mankind. Ever thought professional advice was needed when it came to raising children. If you think about it, the idea is fairly ludicrous. Human beings have been raising children without professional advice. For 1000s of years. Any such advice came from elders in one's family, church or community. Why did we stop listening to our elders and begin listening to people with capital letters after their names? Well, that's a very pertinent question to which one might answer well to do it better to raise kids who are psychologically healthier, you know, have higher self esteem and do better in school and all that stuff? After all, it makes a certain amount of sense that advice from people who are supposedly experts when it comes to child mental health would result in the mental health of children on average getting better. Right? Right. I mean, there's no doubt but that following advice on child physical health, dispensed by pediatricians is going to result in a healthier child. Right. Right. Listening to Certified Public Accountants tell you how to save money on your taxes. Who's going to lower your tax bill? Right. Right. Okay. So the testable proposition, become expert advice on how to properly raise children will result in children who are on average, psychologically healthier than would otherwise be the case? Let me say that again. expert advice on how to properly raise children will result in children who are on average, psychologically healthier than would otherwise be the case. Has that proposition ever been tested? Well, yes, it has. American parents have been testing that very proposition since around 1970 53 years, give or take bods plenty of time within which to determine whether parenting advice dispensed by mental health professionals, psychologists primarily has lived up to its promise so has it is there compelling evidence to the effect that children as a group have benefited from professional parenting advice? Folks, listen to me clearly hear that while you take in what I'm about to say remember that I am a psychologist. I am licensed by the North Carolina psychology board. To practice psychology, to call oneself a psychologist, without having earned a license from one state psychology board, is to break the law and risk the substantial fines and even, yes, jail time. So, back to the question, is there compelling evidence to the effect that children as a group, have benefited from professional parenting advice? The short answer is no. There is no such evidence, there is zero evidence that would lend credence to the proposition that's on the table before us, and plenty of compelling and consistent evidence. To the contrary, I repeat, there is not one iota of objective evidence that would support the idea. The proposition that's on the table before us that expert advice on how to properly raise children will result in children or has resulted in children who are on average, psychologically healthier, than would otherwise be the case. And there is a boatload of evidence supporting the opposite conclusion, which is that professional parenting advice has been bad for the mental health of children, and the functional health of families. I mean, very, very bad. For example, and this is the most significant example of all in fact, for example, the mental health of America's kids today is a whopping 10 times worse. And that may be a conservative estimate, than it was in the 1960s 10 times. And that is not some off the cuff estimate that yours truly pulled out of thin air. That is a statistical fact based on the staggering post 1960s increase in child and teen suicide, as well as even greater increases in the per capita number of children experiencing serious emotional crises before they reach the age of 16. I want you to also consider that since 1970, when I was in my first full year of graduate school, learning what it took to become a child and family psychologist. And already by the way, the father of one child, the per capita number of child and teen therapists, as in professionals who concern themselves with the mental health of America's kids, has increased exponentially. Today, there are at least 100 times, and again, that is a conservative estimate, one 100 times the per child number of mental health therapists than there were in 1970. Over that same 50 plus year period, during which the majority of American parents have been taking their marching orders from mental health professionals, the ranks of which have swelled enormously. child and teen mental health has fallen off a cliff and keeps right on following. Can you think of anything more ironic? Anything more damning to the mental health professionals in question? Here's some facts to consider. The student population of the high school I attended in suburban Chicago from 1961 to 1965. proviso West High School in Hillside Illinois, was right around 5000. This was at the height of when baby boomers. Early baby boomers, like myself were coming to high school and high schools were bursting at the seams with teenage populations. During the four years of my residency at proviso West, not one student committed suicide not one minute during that four year period between nine and 10,000 students walked the halls of proviso West and there is no record or remembrance of any child committing suicide. I've asked lots and lots of people my age or there abouts from all over the country, if they remember a high school classmate committing suicide, every one of those people and they number in the hundreds. As answered no. Today's suicide is the number two cause of death among America's teens. In the 1950s and 60s, teenage suicide was virtually unheard of. Likewise, people my age don't remember high school classmates having what were then called nervous breakdowns. They don't remember girls starving themselves to death. And the 50s and 60s, teens weren't seeing therapists. Today the teen especially female teen, who hasn't seen a therapist is an anomaly. In the 50s and 60s, no one was taking psychiatric drugs for depression or anxiety. I mean, no teenager. Today, more than 6 million children and teenagers in America are taking psychiatric drugs for various bogus psychiatric diagnoses. Mostly ADHD, clinical depression and anxiety. 6 million. And if the mental health industry had their way, nearly every American child today would have a diagnosis and be taking prescription drugs. By the way, I encourage you to stay tuned to this podcast. It'll be released every Tuesday at midnight, Midnight Tuesday morning. That is, in a future program. I'm going to expose the lies coming from the mental health and medical industries concerning psychiatric diagnoses and psychiatric drugs. But for now, I'm simply going to say that one went when one looks up a definition of pathological lying. The Mental Health Professions definitely qualify. Like I said, stay tuned. But for now, back to our question, is there compelling evidence to the effect that professional parenting advice as improve the mental health of American children or improve the state of childbearing in America? So far, we've established that since American parents began listening to mental health professionals, tell them how to raise kids, the mental health of children, has worsened considerably and continues to worsen. This has happened, mind you, during a 50 year period, during which the per child number of child and teen therapists has increased exponentially. That's like finding out folks that as more and more physicians specialize in oncology, the number of per capita deaths from cancer increases, according to an accelerating curve. If that was true, people would view oncology with great skepticism, they'd probably even consider that it might be a force. If someone can make a compelling case, to me, that professional parenting advice has been a great boon for America's kids. Let them try because I'm listening. In that regard, I think it's safe to say that I am one of the most, if not the most, prominent family psychologists in this country for at least 35 years since I came to grips with the facts. I've been telling parents to stop listening to mental health professionals concerning their kids. I've been telling parents that psychology is a fake science, which is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The mental health industry knows what I'm saying, by the way, for obvious reasons. They don't like what I'm saying not one bet. But have they ever been able to prove that what I'm saying is wrong? And believe me, and without going into details they have tried. But the answer is a firm no. The mental health industry has never been able to prove that what I say about its practices and results is fabricated. They just don't like it. For obvious reasons. They don't like what I say about them at all. Who can blame them. The bottom line folks, America's mental health industry can't be trusted. They are dispensing misinformation in the form of fake explanations, fake research, fake diagnoses, fake therapies, and fake medicine. And in the face of overwhelming evidence that what they are doing isn't working, and is in fact making things worse. They keep right on doing it. Because they have bamboozled America's parents, and the bamboozlement is making them lots and lots of money. What exactly did mental health frauds tell parents to do that resulted in the destruction of child and teen mental health of four things? First, they demonized parental authority. They told him American parents that the key to good child mental health, which they referred to as high self esteem, was a wonderful parent child relationship. In effect, they told parents that if they had a wonderful relationship with their children, their kids would be psychologically fit, more fit, in fact, than any previous generation of human children. In America, parents having a wonderful relationship was the key. Second, they told parents that the wonderful relationship in question should be democratic, meaning parents should create families in which they treated their children as equals. I'm not kidding, folks. Go back to the early 70s and see it for yourself. Read books like parent effectiveness training by psychologist Thomas Gordon, one of the biggest selling parenting books of the decade. Read your child's self esteem by family therapist Dorothy Briggs, another huge seller, the professional dunderheads told parents to give their kids an equal say in everything. And that if parents and child had a difference of opinion, the parents were to problem solve with the child, as if the child was an adult, and reach a compromise. Let me repeat that. The so called experts experts, told parents to compromise with their children will Fancy that. Third, the dunderheads told parents that children were rational, which is certainly not what the Bible says about kids. For, you know, a reference on that see, for example, Proverbs 2215, which describes children as foolish, meaning they are driven by emotion. And the dunderheads said that, because children were rational, any behavior problem could be solved by talking to the child about his or her feelings when he beat his sister over the head with a Tonka truck, for example, and talking about alternative ways of expressing those feelings and so on. Along those same lines, the professional experts told parents that they should explain themselves to their children, because I said so was unknown. And so, around 1970 parents started down this road thinking that people with fancy titles and lots of capital letters after their names must know what they were talking about. And within 10 years, things started going to hell in a handbasket, as my mother would have said. By 1980s significant numbers of children were openly defying their parents, and even defying their teachers, children, even children in their teen years, were throwing horrifying tantrums when they didn't get their way. Children were disrespecting their parents and other adults calling them vile names and the like. And parents and wholesale numbers, and especially mothers were beginning to be afraid of their children. But the biggest mistake the experts made mistake number four was they told parents that good parenting was primarily a matter of properly interpreting and properly responding to their children's feeling. The new post 1960s and will lightened parent or supposedly enlightened, was told that big feelings on the part of the child meant something big was a mess in the child's life, and that parents needed to take inventory and try to correct what whatever was a mess, which usually boiled down to the parents doing something wrong, like not giving the child enough attention. Or not praising the child enough, or acting intolerant of things like crazy wild tantrums. Heaven forbid, parents should talk to their children about their feelings. The expert said, talk, talk, talk talk, it's significant to point out that when I misbehaved as a child, my parents never had a conversation with me about my feelings. Furthermore, I've never run into anyone my age, who remembers their parents, talking to them about their feelings when they misbehaved. Now to the modern era, that may sound Ooh, bad. But remember, folks, when we early boomers were kids, our mental health was 10 times better than the mental health of today's kids 10 times better. 10 times better mental health doesn't mean our parents were doing bad things. It means our parents were doing the right things. And the right things in question had been handed down from their parents, who had gotten them from their parents, who had gotten them from their parents, and so on down the line. Here's a fact. And I mean, it's a fact. The more you talk to children about their feelings, the more feelings they're going to have. Some of you have already discovered that. You just refuse to accept the evidence. And you just keep right on talking to your kids about their feelings. Even though the more you talk, the more feelings they have. Whereas the ability to feel some things like grief, for instance, is what makes us human. Emotions are also very dangerous things. Feelings create relationships, for example, but they also destroy them. Children don't need to be told that any old feeling they have is valid. They need to be taught what feelings are appropriate to what situations. And most of all, they need to be told that they children need to learn to control their feelings. Ah, but the new experts were telling people that children should be allowed to express their feelings, really, all of them, all of their feelings should be expressed freely. Otherwise, they'd get bottled up inside them lay and create some state of emotional constipation or something. And so, in today's schools, it's not unusual to find children as old as 10 throwing tantrums in the classroom. Today's parents frequently report to me that when they don't give their children what they want, but they want their children hit them, kick them, spit on them, throw things at them, call them are really nasty names that I'm gonna leave to your imaginations, such as the price America's paying for listening to mental health professionals. And let me remind you, I am one. I know what I'm talking about. So not only is child and teen mental health gone into the toilet, since American parents began listening to people who are supposed to know how to improve child and teen mental health, but the mental health of parents is in the toilet as well. Raising a child has become stressful, anxiety ridden, ridden, frustrating, guilt producing and just downright infuriating for large numbers of American parents and here I go again, so brace yourself, especially women, mothers, Why are women bearing the brunt of this? Now that is a very interesting and pertinent question. And I will answer it, but I will answer it in an up and coming episode of this fascinating podcast series. So please stay tuned. Just a sneak preview. Once upon a time back when I I was a child children were afraid of their mothers. I was afraid of mine. And my mother never spanked me or even yelled at me. Today's mother, by contrast, is afraid of her child. And she's yelling and screaming almost all the time. More on that conundrum later. So after 1970 has child mental health and behavioral health began deteriorating on a large scale, parents began thinking that any behavior, their problem behavior problem their children develop was indication that they, the parents, in other words, were not succeeding and having wonderful relationships with their kids. That they weren't succeeding at treating their kids as equals, and that they weren't succeeding at talking to their children about their feelings. So they tried even harder to do with their great grandparents would have thought was crazy in the first place. And child and teen mental health kept right on getting worse. We know what the key to good mental health whether child, teen or adult is. It's something called Emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is simply the ability to tolerate the fact that Reality Bites as we say today, or, as Billy Shakespeare put it, in Hamlet, tolerate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A young person possessing of emotional resilience doesn't need a safe space. When his literature professor assigns Huckleberry Finn, a young person with emotional resilience doesn't have a panic attack. When someone insults them. A person possessing of emotional resilience doesn't need a therapist to navigate the realities of life. No matter what standard is applied. Today's kids don't possess anywhere near the emotional rules resilience. We early boomers possessed the last generation of kids whose parents didn't, for the most part, read parenting books, the last generation of kids to be raised the old way, the traditional way, the common sensical way, the same way, there are two logical conclusions to be reached here first, the old way pre 1970 of raising kids was better by far than the new post post 1970 way. Second, professional child rearing advice, which has consistently demonized the old way of doing things has not improved the mental health of children. And, in fact, professional parenting advice is the primary reason primary that the mental health of America's kids has deteriorated so markedly since the 1960s. And what about parents as advice from highfalutin psychologists and other intellectually arrogant, believe me? People in my profession are some of the most intellectually arrogant individuals I've ever met. Has advice from highfalutin psychologists, and other intellectually arrogant mental health types? Made raising a child a simpler proposition? Once again? No, not at all. Your great grandmother, great, great grandmother, her mother, her mother and her mother did not complain that raising children was the hardest thing that ever done. And consider that each of those women probably raised two to three times the number of kids you are raising. This parenting thing has called has caused parents, especially women to suffer great stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, guilt, and who even in some cases wish they had never had children. I've heard exactly that from dozens of women. If you haven't noticed the birth rate has fallen considerably. Since the 1960s No matter how one looks at it, folks, professional parenting advice has been a bust. It's been bad Bad, bad, bad for all concern. It should be obvious by this point in time that mainstream mental health professionals don't know what they're talking about concerning children and parental responsibilities. I'm sure you've figured out by now that I am not by a longshot mainstream. I am a certified psychological heretic. I have the certificate issued by myself hanging on my wall like a college diploma. I am the not a mind you, but the thorn in the side of America's mental health professions. They are the Emperor and the Emperor is wearing no clothes. In upcoming podcasts, I will elaborate on why my professional psychology is fake science grounded in fake theories, that it's fake science promoting fake therapies, giving fake diagnoses pushing fake drugs bla bla bla. Psychology is fakery, folks. Take it from me. I am licensed to practice psychology by the North Carolina psychology board, which I guarantee you regrets the day they ever gave me a license. To them. I am nothing but trouble. And that is what I am going to continue being also an upcoming podcast, I'm going to talk a lot about the difference between mere child rearing and parenting. mere child rearing is what people did before 1970. Parenting is what we have been doing since the words are often used synonymously but they are actually horses of two very different colors. child rearing and parenting are not both horses even if one is a horse, the other is a duck. childbearing is what your great grandparents did parenting is what today's parents do. It's what parents have been doing since around 1970. Or remember these words because I will refer to them every now and then. You cannot raise children in two entirely different ways and arrive at the same outcome. If you raise children and two entirely different ways, you will arrive at two entirely different outcomes. I hope you'll join me to find out more about your favorite podcaster please check out my website set parenting guru.com and John rosemond.com where you will find just about every resource you need to become the parent you've always wanted to be a do. Saya Nara, and thanks for joining me on another episode of because I said so.