1 Oct 2023

Dr Lucy Foulkes: Why ‘therapy speak’ might be making us feel worse

From Sunday Morning, 10:10 am on 1 October 2023

Many of us grew up in a time when mental health just wasn’t discussed. These days though mental wellness is being promoted in many aspects of daily life and the language of psychiatry has entered the vernacular. 

Dr Lucy Foulkes is a psychologist who researches mental health and social development in adolescence. She's a research fellow at both Oxford University and the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families in the UK and a lecturer at University College London. In a recent article in New Scientist, she questions if things have necessarily changed for the better. 

Psychiatry. Psychiatrist with unrecognizable patient, talking, taking notes. (Photo by MICROGEN IMAGES/SCIENCE PHOTO LI / SMD / Science Photo Library via AFP)

Photo: MICROGEN IMAGES/SCIENCE PHOTO LI