Abigail Shrier
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute · 1 appearance on the record.
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authorjournalist@AbigailShrier ↗abigailshrier.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
She is the author of Irreversible Damage and Bad Therapy. Her reporting and commentary examine modern parenting, adolescent mental health culture, and gender identity, appearing in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The Free Press.
30statements → 13claims → 13claims resolved → 69%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 3.63/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
9 supported 0 partly supported 4 contradicted how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
13 assertions · 10 opinions · 7 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 13 are resolved. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Abigail argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Their most notable contradicted claim
Controlled Studies Show Grieving People Suffer Worse Outcomes From Therapy
“There's a whole body of research that shows, you know, people who've gone through natural bereavement, the loss of a loved one, often feel worse after therapy. They did these controlled studies with You know, a control group who didn't, who lost a loved one, b…”
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Abigail Shrier on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Abigail Shrier said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
School Psychology Staff Function Exactly Like Corporate DEI Departments
“Because the psych staffs are like the DEI staffs of an organ, of a corporation. That's what the psych staff now is at a school. They effectively run the schools. They pass judgment on everything. They control what a teacher can assign. What kind of test a teac…”
Research Disproves the Claim That Yelling Causes Children Lifelong Trauma
“This is their idea that anything we do to get, anytime you yell at a kid that can traumatize a kid, that injury, emotional injury can be with them for a lifetime. It's not true. It's not what the best research has shown”
Mental Health Experts Have Weakened Youth Resilience by Controlling Family Life
“So I think it's all essentially bad therapy, and this is why, because who's in charge? Who's running the show? And today with children, with families, it really is the mental health experts.”
Public School Teachers and Counselors Are Playing Therapist With Students
“Their mandate is trauma-informed care across public schools, social, emotional learning, and parent, teachers and counselors, armies of counselors are playing shrink with the kids all day long.”
Studies Show Kids Excluded From Social-Emotional Learning Have Lower Anxiety
“Researchers in Australia and England actually tested this, separate groups of researchers, and they were able to show that the kids in the control group who didn't go through these practices ended up happier, better adjusted, better in, in terms of depression …”
The Mental Health Industry Has Systematically Stripped Parents of Their Confidence
“They have so little confidence right now because we've done, because the mental health industry has done everything it can to divest them of any sense that they know what they're doing.”
NIMH Protocols Exclude Parents While Asking 8-Year-Olds About Suicide
“And it was created by our National Institute of Mental Health. This is a federal government agency, and they decided, and this is part of the protocol, kids age eight and up, they asked the parents to leave, and then they asked the children five escalating que…”
CDC Research Shows Normalizing Suicide Discussions Increases Youth Suicide
“The CDC has great research on this, which is that if you present, if you normalize suicide with kids, if you present it as a means of coping with distress, you know, basically telegraphing, this is something other kids are doing. When they feel sad, you consta…”
Controlled Studies Show Grieving People Suffer Worse Outcomes From Therapy
“There's a whole body of research that shows, you know, people who've gone through natural bereavement, the loss of a loved one, often feel worse after therapy. They did these controlled studies with You know, a control group who didn't, who lost a loved one, b…”
Therapy Causes Breast Cancer Survivors to Experience Worse Anxiety and Depression
“Same thing with you know, breast cancer survivors, anxiety about it, depression about it. They did worse if they had gone to therapy and also alienation from a spouse, alienation from parents. All of these are classic iatrogenic effects of therapy, and there's…”
No Robust Scientific Evidence Shows That Preventive Mental Health Therapy Works
“There's no good study showing preventive mental health works unless you're talking about things like a good life, like connection, you know, doing things for others, getting involved in community, dancing, you know, exercising, eating right.”
Stimulants Are Overprescribed to Children Before Making Basic Environmental Adjustments
“There may be kids who need the stimulant, but stimulants are profound, and they are given out way, way too readily without first seeing if we can make adjustments in the child's environment to help them, you know, handle their distractibility.”
Introducing Therapists to Non-Clinical Children Undermines Both Parents and Kids
“It doesn't require a therapeutic expert who's going to undermine the parent's authority with their kids and make the kids, because it makes a kid feel like, oh, my parent, I, my problems are too big for my parents to handle, so they needed to call in this othe…”
Schools Face a Massive Conflict of Interest Managing Student Mental Health
“There is a major conflict of interest with schools getting involved in mental health. Huge conflict of interest. Should never have been allowed.”
Virtually Any Activity Yields Better Mental Health Than SEL Exercises
“Literally anything you could be doing would be better for your mental health than sitting around and doing these exercises.”
Diagnosing Ordinary Misbehavior Strips Children of Their Agency
“We would pathologize ordinary behaviors and treat them to see themselves as disordered. Oh, that's just, you know, you have ADHD. Oh, that's your oppositional defiance disorder. That's why you acted out. So instead of using the sort of lay terms we've always u…”
Gen Z Workers Will Complain to HR If Their Feelings Are Hurt
“And we're seeing even as, you know, the young, this young rising generation goes off to the workplace, if you, if their feelings are hurt at the workplace, they will complain to HR and try to get their boss fired. That seems to them a reasonable response To so…”
Young People Are Pathologizing Normal Emotions With Clinical Diagnoses
“The rising generation never says it's shy. They say they have social phobia. They never say they're sad. They say they're depressed. They never say, gosh, they went through a tough time in middle school. They say they have PTSD. They're speaking the language o…”
Prompting Children to Ruminate on Their Trauma Sabotages Their Resilience
“Instead, we tell the kids the opposite. Your parents are divorced. You've had trauma. Let's talk about it. It's the worst thing we could do for a kid who'd been through something hard.”
Exercise and Dancing Outperform Psychotherapy for Treating Mild to Moderate Depression
“And the reason is, is they've measured things. You know what better for mood, for mild to moderate depression than psychotherapy or antidepressants? Dancing. Yeah. Exercise. Dancing.”
School Psychology Associations Stayed Silent on Foreseeable Lockdown Damage to Children
“The school counselors association, school psychologists association, none of these organizations had anything to say about the foreseeable damage that was going to happen to kids.”
Mental Health Is a Byproduct of Living Well, Not Direct Work
“Mental health is not something you work on. It's something that happens while you're living a good life.”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Abigail Shrier: Why the Kids Aren’t Alright | May 21, 2024 | 53m |