Tag: mental health

Schools Are Pushing Mental Health Screening. Research Shows It Does More Harm Than Good

An increasing number of children are likely to face mental health screening when they return to school this fall. But experts warned those screenings pose more risk than benefit — and urged parents to opt out their child.

“While early identification sounds responsible, in practice it risks doing more harm than good,” Gretchen Watson, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and researcher, told The Defender.

School-based routine or universal mental health screening “often functions as an entry point into a therapeutic culture that pathologizes normal childhood distress, erodes resilience and funnels children toward psychiatric labels, therapy, and medication,” Watson said.

Nearly one-third of U.S. schools now conduct some form of mental health screening — and that number is likely to increase, as more states work to pass mental health screening mandates.

Last year, Illinois became the first state to require students in grades three through 12 to undergo a mental health screening each year.

In January, lawmakers in South Carolina proposed a bill that would create a statewide mental health screening program for students in grades six through 12. The bill is in committee.

It’s a trend that has experts like Watson worried.

Watson is one of the foremost authorities in the U.S. on the overmedicalization of children with psychiatric drugs. She is also the author of the forthcoming book, “The Prescription Affliction: Why We Overmedicate Young Minds with Psychiatric Drugs ― and How to Stop It.”

Mental health screening tools flag many false positives, Watson said. For example, a child grieving the loss of a grandparent, or who is simply more intense or imaginative than the average student, can easily be flagged as needing further evaluation.

“That evaluation can start a cascade: a label, a treatment plan and, in many cases, medication,” she said.

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Combining Marijuana And Music Enhances Medical Benefits, Reduces Prescription Drug Use And Boosts Emotions, Government-Funded Study Shows

A new government-funded study is putting quantifiable evidence behind the idea that marijuana use enhances the experience of listening to music. But the new research also suggests that the combination can bolster the therapeutic benefits of cannabis.

The study, published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research and conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University and other schools in Canada, examined self-reported data from 122 marijuana consumers who completed an exhaustive, 176-question survey.

The findings support one of most anecdotally well-established effects of marijuana use: That is, “most participants viewed the combination of cannabis and music favorably, reporting enhanced relaxation, improved mood, and increased feelings of connection,” the paper says.

Marijuana use was further linked to “altered responses to imposed music in various settings and a heightened likelihood of using music during routine activities,” the research, which was partially funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, determined.

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Therapists Publish Article Claiming Woke Ideology in Psychology is Making Leftists Even Crazier

Two therapists have just published an academic article claiming that woke ideology in psychology is damaging the field and the minds of leftists.

In their writing, the two actually acknowledge that progressives have ‘poorer’ mental health than people on the right, something conservatives have known for years.

They suggest that the integration of wokeness with their field has worsened the problem.

The College Fix reports:

Therapists warn: ‘Woke’ ideology undermining cognitive-behavioral therapy

A new scholarly article describes the mechanisms of how leftist ideology has likely led to a worsening of mental health counseling and classroom curriculum on the subject.

Arnold Cantú and Nathan Gallo are the two social work professionals who authored the article in the latest special Issue of Current Opinion in Psychology.

In it, they attempt to provide “an alternative explanation for potential causes behind the rise in psychiatric diagnoses and poorer mental health outcomes for people who identify as liberal or left-leaning in the United States.”

“Research regularly suggests that left-leaning people have poorer mental health than conservatives,” the two said in an emailed statement to The College Fix, adding it’s a “notable finding that has become increasingly applicable to the younger generation.”

“This article argues that woke ideology—what we refer to as critical social justice ideology—has warped a well-established psychotherapy approach often used to treat various kinds of psychological distress, known as cognitive-behavioral therapy,” they added.

“This ideology’s main tenets are full of ‘cognitive distortions,’ which are faulty, automatic patterns of thinking that CBT attempts to treat. Instead, woke ideology intentionally promotes these patterns, resulting in poorer mental health for clients, families, and therapists who buy into it.”

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Montana Puts Behavioral Health Reform in China‑Linked Hands and a Boy Ends Up with Traumatic Brain Injury

Montana’s lawmakers promised a historic fix. With a $300 million behavioral health investment and a high‑priced consulting firm, the State’s lawmakers said they would “transform” and “mend” a system that had failed vulnerable people for years. Behind that language was a decision AbleChild flagged from the start: the state handed the redesign of its behavioral health system to Alvarez & Marsal, a private firm with business ties in China, instead of building transparent, accountable capacity in Montana. That choice was not a technical detail. It was the blueprint for what would count as “reform.”

A $300 Million “Mend” That Left a 13‑Year‑Old in a Hospital Bed

While consultants and state lawmakers talked about strategy and transformation, the state continued quietly sending children to Provo Canyon School in Utah, for-profit residential psychiatric and behavioral facility with a long history of complaints and abuse allegations. Montana has paid Provo Canyon roughly $26 million over the last decade, proving this was a pipeline, not a one‑off placement.

Then a 13‑year‑old Montana boy allegedly suffered a traumatic brain injury at Provo Canyon. Families, backed by Paris Hilton, have now taken the facility to court, alleging delays and failures in his care. Only after that catastrophic harm did Montana officials suspend new referrals to the facility.  This is what “mend” looks like in practice: a child badly injured in a facility the state has patronized for years, and reform arriving only after the fact.

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The China Question No One in Power Wants to Ask

The China connection is not about Provo Canyon being a Chinese institution. It is about who Montana chose to trust with redesigning its behavioral health system and how it impacts national security and vulnerable children.

Alvarez & Marsal is a global consulting firm that does business in and with China. Montana’s decision was to pay that firm, at hundreds of dollars an hour, help steer how a $300 million “Future Generations” behavioral health investment would be structured and spent. That included advising on the overall continuum of care, financing strategies, and the shape of state services.

At a minimum, the choice raises a basic question the public deserves answered: why would any American state outsource the redesign of its already failing behavioral health system to a consulting firm tied to China, instead of building transparent, accountable capacity at home? If the result of that choice is a polished reform narrative on paper and a child with a brain injury in real life, then the outsourcing model—not just its implementation—has to be on trial.

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Case of Air Force Officer Highlights Disturbing Mental Health Diagnosis Manipulation in the U.S. Military

Could this case expose a troubling trend within military mental health care, where diagnoses can be manipulated to justify punitive measures rather than provide needed support?

This potentially unsettling reality is illustrated by the experience of Dacia “Thunder” Sexton, a decorated Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and sexual assault survivor. Sexton’s story was first shared on The Star Chamber Podcast of Walk the Talk Foundation (WtTF) on April 29.

In the episode, it was said that her case “exposes what happens when excellence threatens insecure leaders, frauds get unmasked, and retaliation becomes the response.”

For one year, Sexton received treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), only to have the command-directed processes reshape her diagnosis into a personality disorder, raising serious concerns about the integrity of mental health evaluations in the military.

The Gateway Pundit spoke to Jeremiah “Jay” Bybee, Sexton’s WtTF advisor, about this abhorrent turn of events. The retired Air Force Master Sergeant said, “Her case isn’t just about retaliation; it’s about diagnostic transformation under command pressure.”

Phases of “Thunder’s” Story

Bybee outlined four distinct “phases” of her narrative. The first phase involved a diagnosis of PTSD related to Military Sexual Trauma (MST) in 2022. The second phase saw Sexton’s symptoms continuing and worsening, leading to increased cognitive difficulties, memory loss, hypervigilance, time blindness, and cognitive exhaustion saturation. The third phase included a command-directed assessment that identified Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in 2024. Shortly thereafter, in the fourth phase, all her earlier symptoms were reinterpreted.

“The same symptoms—newly identified Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs)—were reframed as maladaptive behavior, uncooperative conduct, and accountability failures,” he explained.

For Sexton, this triggered disciplinary action, career damage, and significant financial harm. For Bybee, “The case raises serious questions about whether medical diagnoses were altered—intentionally or negligently—to justify administrative punishment.”

“One thing is certain: when the diagnosis changed, so did the way Dacia was treated,” he argued. “Medical symptoms became disciplinary evidence, requests for care became noncompliance, and trauma responses became credibility issues.”

The consequences included the dismantling of her career, reputation, and re-traumatization through administrative and disciplinary actions to include:

  • A Letter of Reprimand (LOR)
  • Command surveillance of daily movements
  • Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP)
  • Loss of a $100K+ career bonus
  • Total financial harm exceeding $170K

“Recent medical findings identify multiple previously undiagnosed TBIs,” Bybee pointed out. These include physical TBI linked to a vehicle accident that resulted in loss of consciousness, likely chemical and/or neurological injury tied to assault conditions, and chronic neurocognitive deficits to include memory loss and executive dysfunction. “These directly map to the behaviors used to justify punishment,” he argued.

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A New Study Just Confirmed the Left’s Worst-Kept Secret

If you’ve spent any time arguing with liberals online, you already know this. Now there’s a study to prove it.

Decades of research have shown that political conservatives report better mental health and greater happiness than their counterparts on the left. A new study published in the journal Political Behavior takes that finding a step further, finding that “mental illness is emerging as its own political identity and is most heavily aligned with leftist political ideology and causes,” and that it clusters heavily among younger, far-left Americans.

Shocking, I know.

Columbia University’s magazine noted back in 2023 that “American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being than conservatives.” However, researchers spent years scratching their heads over why. Scholars from the Universities of Florida and Toronto eventually took a crack at it, drawing on four separate studies. Their conclusion? Conservatives tend to have greater personal agency, religiosity, moral clarity, a positive outlook, and stronger self-worth… which are traits consistently linked to resilience and mental health. In other words, having a sense of purpose and taking responsibility for your life is good for you. Who knew?

Professor Lauren Van De Hey of Utah State University has conducted research that connects the mental health gap directly to political identity formation. Her findings were drawn from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, a large, nationally representative survey administered by YouGov.

“I further find that there is an emerging mental health political identity that is most pronounced among younger (Gen Z) and more liberal Americans,” Van De Hey said.

Roughly half of the study participants who identified as having a mental illness said that identity was very important or somewhat important to them personally. Yeah, that’s a voting bloc in the making.

Van De Hey also found that mental health identity operates differently in politics than physical disability or serious physical illness. “I find that the political predictors and political consequences for the emerging mental health identity differ from those for physical disability and serious physical illness categorization and identification,” she said. The implication is clear: mental health struggles, increasingly worn as badges of identity, carry huge political weight.

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The Crisis Creators – Why Behavioral Health Makes Everything Worse

If anyone hasn’t figured out yet where too much of America’s health problems begin, look no further than the behavioral health industry. It’s time to take a serious look.

While the federal government is in an all-out offensive to uncover fraud in State Medicaid programs, the real fraud lies in the psychiatric diagnosing that has gone unchecked for a hundred years and brought the nation to a mental health crisis.

Just this month alone, the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has begun a national campaign to reduce the use of psychiatric drugs by publishing “deprescribing” guidance and training for doctors for any number of the tens of millions of Americans who are taking Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) commonly referred to as antidepressants.

Here’s the truth. The modern mental health model of diagnosis and drug treatment is an enormous failure. People have been harmed for years using antidepressants, and go figure, the medical community admits it’s hard to get off prescription mind-altering drugs. The goal of the HHS Secretary is to finally make drugs one of many options for “treatment” of mental illnesses. But is that enough? Is that really the answer to over-prescribing?

It’s a fact. Americans can’t get the drugs without a mental disorder diagnosis, and the diagnoses are not based on science. In other words, there isn’t anything broken in anyone’s brain that can be medically measured…no X-ray, CAT Scan, blood or urine test can identify any of the alleged mental disorders. And, the fact is, if an abnormality was discovered in the brain, most likely a neurologist would be utilized…not a psychiatrist. Neurologists study brain disease, and psychiatrists study behavior. A very big difference that has been ignored in the modern mental health model.

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A Single Dose Of Psilocybin Can Lead To ‘Rapid’ And ‘Long-Lasting’ Improvements In Depression, Study Indicates

A single dose of psilocybin, coupled with therapy sessions, significantly improved symptoms of depression within days and lasting for a period of months, according to a first-of-its-kind study out of Sweden that was published by the American Medical Association.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Brain Stimulation Clinic in Stockholm conducted the phase 2 randomized clinical trial, which involved 35 participants with moderate-t0-severe depression who received either a 25 milligram dose of psilocybin or a placebo of niacin.

For the study, published in JAMA Psychiatry last week, patients also underwent five psychotherapy sessions to supplement the psychedelic or placebo experience.

The psilocybin cohort, on average, showed clinically observable improvement in their symptoms compared to the placebo group at day 8.

“This finding implies that psilocybin can be an option to standard treatments when rapid symptom relief is important,” the paper says.

By the sixth week of the trial, 53 percent of the psilocybin cohort were considered to be in remission for depression, while just 6 percent of the placebo group said the same by that point.

However, researchers found that the overall effect seemed to subside after a year.

”Our results suggest that psilocybin can provide rapid, clinically meaningful improvement in depression and may serve as an alternative to standard treatment when fast symptom reduction is important,” lead study author Hampus Yngwe said in a press release.

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Another Detransitioner Wins A Huge Settlement

A woman who underwent a double mastectomy after identifying as “nonbinary” has reportedly secured a confidential $3.5 million settlement after suing the mental health professionals who approved her for the life-altering procedure. Camille Kiefel, 36, alleged in a malpractice lawsuit that two Oregon therapists signed off on the surgery after only brief telemedicine consultations, despite a documented history of mental health issues. The settlement was reached just days before the case was set to go to trial. 

The case is already fueling renewed scrutiny of how quickly some medical providers have approved irreversible gender procedures for vulnerable patients struggling with serious mental health issues.

The settlement comes after another detransitioner, Fox Varian, won a $2 million judgment back in February against the providers who referred her for a double mastectomy at age 16. Soon after the settlement was announced, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons announced its position on gender transition surgeries for minors, concluding “there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents.” According to reporter Benjamin Ryan, at least 30 detransitioners have sued healthcare providers in the past four years.

Kiefel’s complaint, filed in 2022, named licensed clinical social worker Amy Ruff and licensed professional counselor Mara Burmeister, along with their respective employers, Brave Space and the Quest Center for Integrative Health. According to the suit, it took only two telemedicine Zoom sessions, each lasting about an hour or less, for Kiefel to get approval for the surgery.

Kiefel’s history at the time of those consultations showed obvious signs of mental health issues that should have been taken into account, but clearly were not. She had a documented record of trauma, depression, ADHD, and suicidal ideation. Her path toward identifying as “nonbinary” began even earlier.

She has described a childhood incident in which her best friend was sexually assaulted when both girls were in the fifth grade. “I started dressing more masculine after that,” she recalled. “I just wanted to protect myself.” In college, a women’s studies course introduced her to the concept of being nonbinary, and she came to believe adopting that identity could explain the gender-related distress she had carried since childhood.

Despite the approval of the mental health professionals, the surgery did not resolve her gender dysphoria, and within two years, she detransitioned. 

In the interim, she developed vertigo, tinnitus, and Raynaud’s syndrome, a condition that causes extremities to go numb and cold. She eventually began working with a naturopath and exploring the relationship between gut health and mental wellbeing. Once she addressed her physical health through nutrition, she says both her mental and physical condition improved substantially. 

That improvement is what forced the harder question.

“So while I’m addressing all my physical health issues, I start to question whether or not the surgery was helpful for me,” she told Fox News Digital. “And then about a year and a half later, I de-transitioned.”

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Belief that words cause ‘lasting’ harm tied to politics, poor mental health: study

Individuals more likely to believe words can harm rated themselves as higher in intellectual humility, while also expressing greater support for censorship

A new psychology study suggests that Americans who believe words can cause “lasting” psychological harm are also more likely to support censorship, safe spaces, and silencing controversial viewpoints.

These individuals are also more likely to struggle with depression and believe themselves to be intellectually humble, according to the research, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

The study introduces what scholars call the “Words Can Harm Scale,” a measurement tool designed to quantify how strongly individuals believe speech can cause lasting emotional damage.

The researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. adults and found that individuals who scored higher on the scale were more likely to endorse trigger warnings, support safe spaces, and believe controversial viewpoints should be suppressed. They also reported higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower resilience.

Lead researchers created the 10-item scale to better understand the role of perceived harm in ongoing debates about speech and censorship.

“A lot of societal disagreements seem to hinge on the belief that words can cause lasting harm,” co-author Sam Pratt, a psychology PhD student at UCLA, told The College Fix in an exclusive interview. “We wondered whether people’s attitudes on these issues could be predicted by a general belief that words can cause harm, so we created a scale to measure it.”

The researchers define “harm” not simply as offense or discomfort but as lasting psychological damage.

“We’re interested in the perception that words can cause lasting psychological damage — leaving people emotionally scarred, traumatized, or permanently harmed,” Pratt said.

Importantly, the study does not attempt to determine whether speech always causes such damage. Instead, it focuses on how belief in harm shapes social and political attitudes.

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