by Guest

contribution by Zarathustra

The psychologist Oliver James – author of Affluenza, The Selfish Capitalist and innumerable what-does-it-all-mean think-pieces in the press – has recently been churning out a series in the Guardian entitled Family Under the Microscope. Each week James offers a stunning revelation about the psychology of family life.

Some of these revelations are either dubious or just outright wrong. At times the reader is left wondering how much this says about psychology and how much is about Oliver James’ view of the world.

1. For example, James recently announced which demographic in the UK is most at risk of severe mental illness. Guess which it is. Homeless people? Single mums on benefits? Refugees from war zones? Nope. It’s middle-class teenage girls.



In fact, a new study suggests that 15-year-old girls – and especially offspring of the class of person who reads this paper – are probably the most mentally ill single group of people in the whole country: a staggering 43% of them are seriously emotionally distressed (ie mildly depressed or anxious) and 27% are suffering a full-scale major mental illness (severe depression or anxiety).

27% of 15 year old girls have a severe mental illness? Does that figure seem a little implausible to you? After all, we’re not talking about being down in the dumps here, but the kind of life-crippling mental disorders that would interfere with every aspect of your daily living. Surely we’d notice if a quarter of our kids were off sick from school with mental illnesses?

There’s a simple explanation: his claim is total bollocks. It’s based on a single research paper that surveyed teenage girls in Scotland with a 12 point questionnaire about their general state of happiness. It concluded that teenage girls were generally less happy than they used to be, but offered no diagnoses or claims about epidemiology of mental illness.

2. In another article he states that ADHD is caused by Mum getting stressed.

There is now overwhelming evidence that Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder and behaviour problems are directly caused by maternal stress during pregnancy. There are big implications, not the least of which is that the repeated claim that ADHD should be regarded as having a largely genetic cause requiring a pill-based solution is no longer defensible.

There is indeed some research evidence linking maternal stress to ADHD, but it’s not extensive. It may be just a contributing factor rather than a direct cause, and it may just be simple correlation rather than causation. “Overwhelming evidence” it is not.

Furthermore, even if it were proved that ADHD is caused by maternal stress, James’ insistence that “the message is not to blame their genes and choose psychotherapy instead rather than joining the 340,000 children on Ritalin-like medication” makes no sense. If it’s the result of a physiological change due to pregnancy complications, why does that invalidate the use of medication? There are arguments to be made about psychosocial vs pharmacological interventions in children, but this ain’t it.

3. Elsewhere, he claims that early onset of puberty in girls is caused by absent fathers. Again, there is a small evidence base for this, but strangely the one research paper he cites links early menarche to obesity, not paternal absence.

Seriously, Oliver, if you think teenage girls should be listened to more, that pregnant women should stay home and relax, that dads should stick around for their kids, then just say so. Don’t cherrypick or misrepresent the research in order to give these things a physiological basis that’s dubious at best. Otherwise you’re just guilt-tripping families – particularly those at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, for whom such things may not always be feasible.

4. Last week James took a break from the psychology of families in order to give his views on psychological treatments for dementia. He declared all of them – validation, reminiscence, reality orientation, CBT – to be limited or counterproductive, except for one. By a strange coincidence, this one therapy happens to be totally unresearched, but which he has a clear financial interest in. I’m sure his motives are pure.

Honestly, why does the media insist on giving credence to this preposterous twerp when some of his research is so shambolic?

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Zarathustra is a mental health nurse in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). He edits the Mental Nurse blog.