Every day I read through Facebook threads in parent support groups devoted to serious childhood mental health challenges, such as pathological demand avoidance (PDA), disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA), and more. These groups exist because parents are exhausted, frightened, and failed by a mental health system that moves too slowly and often lacks the clinical expertise to help their child.

That need is real, but these groups are structured in a way that promotes misinformation, and the harm to children can no longer be overlooked.

A parent posts about a struggle with their child. But much of the advice that follows runs counter to well-established, evidence-based interventions, and some of it can be downright harmful. I reply, politely, citing clinical best practices, but within minutes the harsh responses begin: “You’ve obviously never met a child with PDA,” or “I trust my own gut before your ‘so-called’ science.” A group administrator messages me that I am “upsetting the group members” and a day or two later, I’m removed.

The Echo Chamber

An echo chamber reinforces beliefs through repeated contact with people and information that already agree with them. An analysis of over 100 million posts across multiple social media sites found this same pattern on every platform (Cinelli et al., 2021).

Confirmation bias occurs when we notice information confirming what we already believe and discount what contradicts it (Nickerson, 1998). Layered on top is conformity pressure: In Solomon Asch’s famous experiments, participants went along with an obviously wrong group answer on roughly a third of trials (Asch, 1956). That pressure produces conformity bias, where people don’t just comply outwardly but actually come to believe the group’s position is correct—driven by wanting to fit in and by assuming the group must know something they don’t (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).

What Happens When a Clinician Pushes Back

Another psychological effect that drives these hostile responses is cognitive dissonance. Questioning a so-called “neurodiversity coach” the group already aligns with doesn’t just contradict a fact; it implies a parent’s past choices might not have been the best and could possibly even be harmful. Holding on to “I did everything right” while also considering “maybe I didn’t” results in an unbearable tension. Leon Festinger‘s classic theory shows the mind resolves that tension fastest by discrediting the messenger, not the belief (Festinger, 1957). Attacking a clinician or scientist is easier than admitting you might have been wrong. The sunk-cost fallacy compounds it: The more time and money a parent has spent on a coach’s protocol, the harder it is to admit it isn’t working (Arkes & Blumer, 1985). I suspect the sunk cost fallacy is the principal driver of the majority of these hostile responses.

The parents who push back hardest in these groups are often the ones who have built their entire identity around their child’s diagnosis (what psychologists call “role engulfment”). They report quitting jobs to devote themselves fully to their child’s needs, battling teachers who “refuse to help my child,” and fighting a mental health system that “won’t listen.” Once identity through diagnosis occurs, any mention of an effective treatment isn’t just information—it’s a threat to the self, triggering the same defensive biases documented whenever a person’s sense of self-integrity comes under threat: denial, dismissal, and discrediting the source (Sherman & Cohen, 2006).

Group administrators play a role in the spread of misinformation. Researchers found that admins deleted more comments clashing with their views than matching ones, and were more likely to ban those who posted them (Ashokkumar et al., 2020). Guarding the group’s certainty protects an admin’s beliefs as much as the group’s.

Groups don’t just resist correction; discussion among people who agree pushes the group further toward the extreme it favors, known as group polarization (Fraser, Gouge, & Billig, 1971). An analysis of 73 Facebook pages found dissenting content failed to spread, while false confirmatory information spread readily.

Clinicians aren’t just ejected from these groups; many self-select out. Research on how people behave in groups found that when a group member’s deviation was met with rejection or exclusion by other members, that member became significantly more likely to voluntarily leave the group (Ditrich & Sassenberg, 2016). In doing so, it leaves no one left to challenge the misinformation, leaving the impression that other perspectives don’t even exist.

Why This Matters Even More for Vulnerable Kids

Some of these conditions are based on thin evidence. For example, PDA isn’t recognized in the DSM-5 or ICD-11, and a 2026 review concluded current evidence makes it “highly improbable” to support PDA as a distinct diagnostic entity, and flagged potential harms from premature use of the label given the stigmatizing term “pathological” (Company & Rotella, 2026).

Into that gap has stepped a cottage industry of paid coaches whose only credential is having raised a single neurodivergent child. Lived experience is valid and important, of course, but on its own it doesn’t qualify a parent to make treatment recommendations. A heart condition in your child doesn’t make you a cardiologist.

One program for PDA charges up to $5,000 a month, calling itself “the only program proven to work” while ignoring its own study that found trivial, non-significant improvement in PDA behavior (Carlozzi et al., 2025; At Peace Parents, n.d.). For DMDD, a decades-old off-label medication regimen circulates with claimed success near 90% despite never having a controlled trial (Sunseri, 2025). For EBSA, a structured program combining therapy and parental support returned 96% of adolescents to school within six months (Denis et al., 2026)—evidence that rarely survives a Facebook thread insisting any return to school is traumatic.

Coaches are big business and are unlikely to disappear without community pushback. Utah expanded its authority to investigate unlicensed coaches after one was convicted of child abuse (KSL News, 2025).

What Parents Can Do

You don’t have to leave your support group; community and support matter. But skepticism is essential. Notice when a parent or coach dismisses a clinician for lacking lived experience; that’s a biased mindset talking. Both lived experience and science are important if we’re going to help kids. If a lone voice raises a question the group doesn’t like and the group starts to pile on, that’s a big red flag that you’re in an echo chamber. In Asch’s experiments, even one ally willing to voice the dissenting view cut conformity errors by roughly three-quarters (Sunstein, 1999). That voice could be yours.

A Call to Action for Group Admins

Moderating is unpaid, thankless work, but leave room for scientific dissent without censoring it. Filtering out cruelty and spam protects your members; filtering out anything that unsettles the group’s certainty protects something else.

A Call to Action for Clinicians

If you’re a clinician reading this, go into these spaces anyway, even knowing what it will cost you. Speak out: Cite the science, cite the research, say what’s true even when it’s unwelcome. Prepare to be eviscerated and called every ugly name in the book. Then go back in and do it again.

Somewhere in that thread is a child who has no voice of their own, and a parent who is reading and deciding what to believe. They are the ones being harmed by our silence.