{"id":77723,"date":"2025-08-12T18:11:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77723\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T18:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:11:12","slug":"stop-asking-kids-if-theyre-depressed-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77723\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Asking Kids If They\u2019re Depressed"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Tuesday, August 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press\u2014and our take on the world at large. Today: Trump sends in the National Guard to clear out D.C.\u2019s homeless encampments. A neglected Biden-era immigration hotline may hold the key to rescuing missing migrant children. And more.<\/p>\n

But first: Abigail Shrier on the danger of asking kids if they\u2019re depressed.<\/p>\n

While I was writing my book Bad Therapy<\/a>, my middle school\u2013aged son returned home from sleepaway camp with a persistent stomachache.<\/p>\n

I took him to urgent care, where a nurse asked me to leave the room so he could administer a mental health screening tool<\/a> put out by our National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).<\/p>\n

Afterward, I requested a copy of the survey and photographed it. Here, verbatim, are the five questions the nurse intended to ask my son in private:<\/p>\n

1. In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?<\/p>\n

2. In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?<\/p>\n

3. In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?<\/p>\n

4. Have you ever tried to kill yourself? If yes, how? When?<\/p>\n

5. Are you thinking of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe.<\/p>\n

Children across America are being asked these questions by doctors. Because this is explicit protocol<\/a> from the National Institute of Mental Health: Ask parents to leave so that you can administer the following questions to kids, ages eight and up, who may have not shown any signs of mental distress.<\/p>\n

There are so many problems with this. The main one is: Kids are wildly suggestible, especially where psychiatric symptoms are concerned. Ask a kid repeatedly if he might be depressed\u2014How about now? Are you sure?\u2014and he just might decide that he is.<\/p>\n

Now, thanks to Illinois governor JB Pritzker, tens of thousands of Illinois kids will be encouraged to think of themselves as sick. Many or most will be false positives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read my piece:<\/p>\n

\u2014Abigail Shrier<\/p>\n

If kids are suffering from overdiagnosis, many of the homeless people on our streets\u2014and almost one in five homeless individuals have psychotic conditions\u2014suffer from a policy regime that allows them literally to die in plain sight.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump thinks he has a solution. He recently signed an executive order that makes it easier to impose psychiatric care on homeless people who suffer from severe mental illness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Sally Satel is a psychiatrist who knows this problem intimately and says she largely agrees with Trump\u2019s executive order if\u2014and that\u2019s a big if\u2014he carries it out properly.<\/p>\n

We got a taste of how it might play out yesterday when President Trump announced that he is putting the Washington, D.C., police under federal control and deploying the National Guard, and part of their mandate will include clearing homeless encampments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin<\/p>\n

\"Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump just handed China a win in the artificial intelligence race that he may soon regret\u2014by ending an export ban on powerful chips used to train AI models. \u201cChina\u2019s lack of unfettered access to U.S.-designed AI chips is America\u2019s clearest advantage in the AI race,\u201d write national security experts Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin. \u201cBy reversing the ban, the White House is helping Beijing\u2019s Communist regime close the gap.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Inside<\/a><\/p>\n

How did unaccompanied minors who crossed the border into the U.S. end up in the care of gang-affiliated guardians? The answer may lie in a backlog of 65,000 calls to a neglected Biden-era hotline, rife with reports of abuse, rape, and human trafficking. Today, a small army of government volunteers is combing through these call logs to track down the migrant children in danger\u2014and bring the adults who victimize them to justice.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

In the latest episode of his podcast, Coleman Hughes sat down with Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, whose criticisms of the left have consistently drawn subscriber ire\u2014and earned her a loyal fanbase. Don\u2019t miss their conversation, where McArdle discusses her contrarian takes, including the future of journalism in the AI era: \u201cChatGPT can\u2019t get a congressional staffer drunk and get them to spill on the tax bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"David<\/a>\"The<\/a>\"Ancient<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"Abigail<\/a>Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron hired investigators to research Candace Owens as they geared up for a lawsuit against the podcaster, according to the Financial Times.(Benjamin Cremel via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron hired investigators<\/a> to research Candace Owens as they geared up for a lawsuit against the podcaster, according to the Financial Times. The Macrons\u2019 lawsuit accuses Owens of defamation for claiming that Brigitte is biologically male.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An Israeli air strike killed five Al Jazeera journalists<\/a> on Sunday, including one with alleged ties to Hamas. A spokesperson for the Israeli military confirmed Anas Al-Sharif was a target of the attack and accused him of collaborating with the terror group, while Al Jazeera denied the allegations.<\/p>\n

A federal judge said yesterday he will not unseal<\/a> grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigations in a new blow to President Trump\u2019s campaign to deflect public attention<\/a> from his alleged Epstein ties. \u201cThe Maxwell grand jury testimony is not a matter of significant historical or public interest,\u201d Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote<\/a>. \u201cFar from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

An explosion at a U.S. Steel plant<\/a> near Pittsburgh left two dead and at dozens injured yesterday. In the hours after the explosion, first responders rescued one worker from the rubble of the Coke Works plant in Clairton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tropical Storm Erin formed in the Atlantic Ocean<\/a> yesterday and could become the first hurricane of the season. Early models expect the storm to strengthen into a major hurricane as it nears the Caribbean later this week, though it does not pose an immediate threat to the U.S.<\/p>\n

A California judge heard arguments<\/a> yesterday about whether the Trump administration violated federal law when it deployed the National Guard to quell this summer\u2019s protests in Los Angeles. The trial could set the stage for more legal battles as Trump deploys National Guard troops to fight crime in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

President Trump says that Ukraine and Russia will both have to cede land<\/a> to one another to end their war. \u201cThere\u2019ll be some land swapping going on,\u201d Trump said yesterday, just days before his planned peace talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska this Friday.<\/p>\n

Ford will spend $2 billion<\/a> to overhaul a factory in Kentucky, allowing it to produce more affordable electric vehicles while increasing profit margins. The automaker\u2019s CEO, Jim Farley, announced the investment yesterday at the company\u2019s Louisville plant, which will be converted to make electric cars after 70 years of producing gas-powered vehicles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year, the first personalized CRISPR treatment was used to save the life of a baby boy with a rare genetic disorder in Philadelphia. Pretty soon, the same technology may be used to select for traits that have nothing to do with health: intelligence, height, even personality.<\/p>\n

For our next live debate, we\u2019re convening four experts to tackle the ethics of gene editing in Pittsburgh. Tickets are on sale now<\/a>\u2014don\u2019t miss this one!<\/p>\n

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Tuesday, August 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-77723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}