Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up

Ok I have to preface my review with the caveat that I didn't realize who the author was before picking up this book and that I was very predisposed to agree with her given my habit of being critical and suspicious of psychology and psychiatry as industries thanks to both my personal and professional experiences. Even with that in mind it was an underwhelming read, to put it politely.

I have several pages of notes detailing minor issues I had with this book which I am far too lazy to organize in a proper review and this book is, frankly, not worth the effort since it's both lazy and disingenuous.

Shrier puts research (which she always bring up free of actual citations) on the same standing as anecdotes which often sound entirely made up in their excess. Even when I agreed with her (after all a lot of her takes validate certain aspects of my parenting style which I now have to question) I had to cringe at how poorly supported her opinions were. The few times she provides sources to support her assertions they range from dubious (why would The New Yorker be your source regarding the prevalence of teen suicide?) and questionable (let's not talk about considering Peterson as a valid source) to passable but uncited.

She seems to have a strange fixation on Israel and inserting the fact that someone is Jewish in the conversation even when seemingly irrelevant.

Even when she comes close to recognizing that hyper-individualism and the lack of community are a big part of why both parents and children seem to be so miserable, she remains determined to ignore what incentivizes these situations and why individualized action are unlikely to solve them. She also appears to be entirely oblivious to the many ways in which she affirms one thing and its opposite whenever convenient for her arguments.

Ultimately my conclusion regarding this book, in a move that will surprise exactly no one who knows me, is: Citation needed!