Despite their growing popularity and widespread use, universal school-based mental health interventions, designed to enhance mental health literacy and overall well-being, may lead to unintended adverse outcomes.
A new review published in Current Opinion in Psychology highlights this concern, drawing on findings from large-scale trials. The review found evidence of potential harm, indicating that students participating in universal interventions may experience higher levels of anxiety, depression, and emotional distress.
Led by psychologist Lucy Foulkes of the University of Oxford, along with colleagues Carolina Guzman Holst and Jack Andres, the researchers explored possible mechanisms of these effects and proposed directions for future research.
They highlight concerns that these interventions may increase awareness of negative emotions without providing sufficient guidance, and they emphasize the need for more individualized, evidence-based approaches to support youth mental health.
“If researchers continue running trials of universal interventions, this crucial ethical issue must be considered at all stages of the research. In particular, we recommend that new trials be designed in such a way that we can address two unanswered questions: what factors cause interventions to have negative (or positive) outcomes and which young people are more likely to benefit or are most at risk of potential harm. With this knowledge, the field can move towards designing school-based mental health interventions that take into account individual differences and vulnerabilities, leading to a more effective and less harmful intervention for everyone.”
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Gosh, whaddyaknow, telling kids lies about brain disorders harms them. And because this is all crap research on crap science done by industry sheep, they’re acting like we need to figure out WHY this harms kids so we can find a “better”, more “evidence-based” approach to doing the same things we could just, y’know, stop doing entirely.
This crap is why MIA is terrible now. This research helps no one. Literally no one. Kids are only being harmed in this intervention stuff, so why can’t we just STOP?
Because these decisions are made by industry psychologists with master’s degrees who are so faithful in their “science” that they’re literally only JUST discovering how harmful this stuff is, and they CANNOT open their damn eyes and ears and listen to all the people who were telling them the entire time they were being actively harmed.
This is a study that exists entirely because these “experts” refuse to listen to their subjects. Psych harms don’t happen accidentally.
Stop listening to these fucking “experts” that have never listened to us. Shut this website down if it’s just going to be a megaphone for psychologists who want to pretend they’re working toward social justice while they only ever defend the current system and suggest more of the same.
This shit is worse than just doing nothing. This shit is the equivalent of trying to defend your own abuser and your decision to stay with him because “people can change if you give them grace and patience.” Are you joking? He already pushed you down the stairs, threatened you with a knife, and then gaslit you about it, there won’t be a next time unless you get the fuck out right now.
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I wasn’t able to read this entire inane article, due to a psychological computer hacker issue, which caused me to have to literally erase everything off my computer and phone, from the last several months and years … which is when I learned about the psychological computer and phone hacking issues.
I tried to email Steve, to get someone at MiA to help me sign back into my MiA account, with a new password, but I’m not being able yet to even email people at MiA, it seems, since I got a message from “motto,” and I don’t even know who that is, that:
“Error: The username Someeone Else is not registered on this site. If you are unsure of your username, try your email address instead.”
Whitaker has told me he has given me a lifetime subscription to read the paywalled articles. And since I’m not yet even able to email Steve, well, I’ll work with Apple and Google on that problem, of course, but maybe someone at MiA can help me too?
But I will say, “universal school-based mental health interventions,” are a really inane idea, given the systemic fraud, invalidity, and criminality of the psych industries collectively. That’s just grown adults attacking school children, with neurotoxins, for profit.
Hey, yeh, I was actually able to find a way to comment on MiA. But when did psychologists hacking into innocent people’s computers, to drive them crazy, from within their own computer, become psychological “care.” And I refused to hire that attempted thieving psychologist. Please stop claiming ignorance and benevolence psychologists.
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Having taught many people to swim, both as a swim instructor and as a coach, I can attest to the problems with a “universal” approach and the need for individual understanding and attention.
Trying to address issues requiring individual attention with a universal approach isn’t effective for anyone. It doesn’t effectively address the individual issue and it can cause confusion and problems for others.
Let’s say two or three kids in a group of fifteen novice freestyle swimmers aren’t keeping their elbows high enough during recovery between strokes. As a result, they are throwing their arms out of line to keep their hands from dragging through the water.
If you address the whole group with the issue—even if you say the advice pertains to only “some of them”—the message may be received by those for whom it wasn’t intended and not necessarily by those for whom it was.
So now some kids who previously had good form are bringing their elbows too high out of the water, while the kids who were swinging their arms out of line continue to do so.
Our systems of governance are becoming less and less capable of providing the individual attention that people need. Notice, none of these systems was designed to result in the satisfaction of the individuals they govern as masses.
Institutions ostensibly built to serve us have grown so large and standardized that they can no longer even recognize us as individuals. The concentrated power they enjoy was usurped from individuals and now we’re numbers to be managed en masse. That might be problematic for each of us.
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Hi Dan,
I agree with what you are saying. I am trying to imagine what could be taught in schools that isn’t useful when it comes to mental health. The need outweighs the resources where I have been.
Children are so very well-versed in current cutting behaviors, depression, drug use and bizarre sex practices sex from social media. Our middle school students were learning science in school curriculum through studying true crimes, a very popular subject with the kids.
I worked in rural, low-income a school system as a mental health specialist and found that addressing the home-life of children in the schools was seemingly at odds with the ongoing duty of the school administrators. Principles and vices -principles deal in discipline, and are seemingly challenged when another way of looking at a child’s behavior comes up. Getting counseling for an individual child, or even reaching out to their parents for such purposes was met with warnings and hesitation in my schools.
My role was a temporary one, funded by ESSER dollars. There is a reason counselors from area agencies visit schools, rather than are a part of them. Our team of three therapists for nine schools taught lesson plans on mental health, healthy relationships, communication skills, how to recognize depression symptoms, etcetera.
The need for behavioral care often felt like we were working in an emergency department.
These are hard-working school counselors, who do all kinds of academic scheduling, etc., and administrators that are also strapped for energy, money and time.
Strengthening families and communities is a good idea, but not as a pathology. And maybe the school is a good place to support those who don’t have family, by teaching communication skills at the very least! In this school, the stable families were not the vast majority.
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When reading some of the critical literature on adult psychotherapy outcomes its quite common to read a sentence like ‘the harms or psychotherapy are well known but remain under researched’
It seems most people engaged in these areas are just no incentivised to care about the potential harms.
Lets just keep churning out bad research on top of more bad research and see how high this house of cards can go before it collapses.
Amazing how these systems of narrow, greedy, self interest ‘homoeconomicus’ etc can create such harms in the name of good with a large measure of celebrated wilful ignorance.
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“Balance prevention and treatment?” What indication is there than any “prevention” is going on here? It sounds like it’s doing the opposite of prevention! Why is it assumed that intervening is automatically benign? Even if it’s not overtly damaging, if it does nothing at all, it should no longer be employed. Why run the risk with no benefit?
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While I don’t disagree with the dissenters here, it seems that other universal, classroom lessons required to graduate high school may ultimately be more basic—and more damaging—in the long run. Taught en masse as “the way it is,” they resemble indoctrination more than education.
In civics, for example, we’re taught to accept many follies as natural facts: that one person is capable of representing an entire constituency of individuals with vastly different opinions (not that it could ever be true, but that’s the way it is—it HAS to be that way for our government to operate); that some people know how the masses should be governed (not that it could ever be true, but that’s the way it is—it HAS to be that way); that those with authority over others know—and dictate—what their subordinates’ life experiences should consist of and entail (not that it could ever be true, but that’s the way it is—it HAS to be that way); and that coercive, imposed forces of money and law are necessary to control the masses as masses—for their own benefit (a very popular flavor of Kool-Aid).
With the ground rules established, get out there and pursue happiness!
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