Carolyn Gorman is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute studying mental health policy. She joins me to discuss her new report “School-Based Mental-Health Initiatives: Challenges and Considerations for Policymakers,” which explores the history of mental health programs in schools and examines the limited evidence supporting their effectiveness. We talk about the different types of school-based mental health interventions and how they are used in classrooms today, whether pop psychology and therapy culture fill a vacuum in schools that religious/character/moral education would typically fill, and what schools can do to effectively improve student well-being. We conclude with some thoughts on whether there really is a youth mental health crisis, and the screen time/mental health debate.
You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
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The Mind-Body Politic is a 2019 book that elaborates this issue at length and attempts to offer some meta solutions. I would suggest Carolyn and other policy researchers consider reading it, but without consulting other "experts" employed by the very institutions the authors are describing and criticizing.