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There’s a worrying trend to pathologise ordinary emotion.

We should model expression of feelings as adults.

Asking young people direct questions can alleviate adult concerns.

There’s a worrying trend that I’ve noticed creeping into referrals for a decade or more: to pathologise ordinary emotion, or at least try to. I regularly receive referrals to my psychotherapy practice from concerned parents and professionals who believe there’s something “wrong” with the young person they care about. They’re likely to have consulted artificial intelligence (AI) or Dr Google, who aren’t actual doctors or psych-professionals, of course, and decided the young person might have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or borderline personality disorder (BPD) or dissociative identity disorder (DID) or a combination of these acronyms and more. Often, they think it’s depression.

These three short, fictional vignettes exemplify the types of referrals and how I might respond to them, were........

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