{"id":5634,"date":"2024-05-06T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5634"},"modified":"2024-05-06T09:31:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T09:31:33","slug":"are-schools-too-focused-on-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5634","title":{"rendered":"Are Schools Too Focused on Mental Health?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Recent studies cast doubt on whether large-scale mental health interventions are making young people better. Some even suggest they can have a negative effect.<\/p>\n

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In recent years, mental health has become a central subject in childhood and adolescence. Teenagers narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram. School systems, alarmed by rising levels of distress and self-harm, are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness.<\/p>\n

Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing it. Mental health awareness campaigns, they argue, help some young people identify disorders that badly need treatment \u2014 but they have a negative effect on others, leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are.<\/p>\n

The researchers point to unexpected results in trials of school-based mental health interventions in the United Kingdom and Australia: Students who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness<\/a>, cognitive behavioral therapy<\/a> and dialectical behavior therapy<\/a> did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while.<\/p>\n

And new research from the United States shows that among young people, \u201cself-labeling\u201d as having depression<\/a> or anxiety is associated with poor coping skills, like avoidance or rumination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a paper published last year<\/a>, two research psychologists at the University of Oxford, Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews, coined the term \u201cprevalence inflation\u201d \u2014 driven by the reporting of mild or transient symptoms as mental health disorders \u2014 and suggested that awareness campaigns were contributing to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they\u2019re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional,\u201d said Dr. Foulkes, a Prudence Trust Research Fellow in Oxford\u2019s department of experimental psychology, who has written two books on mental health and adolescence.<\/p>\n

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Recent studies cast doubt on whether large-scale mental health interventions are making young people better. Some even suggest they can have a negative effect.In recent years, mental health has become a central subject in childhood and adolescence. Teenagers narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram. School systems, alarmed by rising levels of distress and self-harm, are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness.Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing it. Mental health awareness campaigns, they argue, help some young people identify disorders that badly need treatment \u2014 but they have a negative effect on others, leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are.The researchers point to unexpected results in trials of school-based mental health interventions in the United Kingdom and Australia: Students who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while.And new research from the United States shows that among young people, \u201cself-labeling\u201d as having depression or anxiety is associated with poor coping skills, like avoidance or rumination.In a paper published last year, two research psychologists at the University of Oxford, Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews, coined the term \u201cprevalence inflation\u201d \u2014 driven by the reporting of mild or transient symptoms as mental health disorders \u2014 and suggested that awareness campaigns were contributing to it.\u201cIt\u2019s creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they\u2019re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional,\u201d said Dr. Foulkes, a Prudence Trust Research Fellow in Oxford\u2019s department of experimental psychology, who has written two books on mental health and adolescence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5636,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5634"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5637,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5634\/revisions\/5637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}