Psychobabble
Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Psychotherapist Joe Nucci dispels common mental health myths and replaces them with no-nonsense truths and accessible guidance for real healing.
The popularization of mental health content on social media has led to an epidemic of mental health misinformation. In Psychobabble, licensed psychotherapist Joe Nucci argues that too many of us are self-diagnosing, improperly deploying therapy-speak, and even coaching others to engage in harmful activities under the guise of “self-care.”
Nucci dismantles 40 popular misconceptions, such as:
Everyone needs to go to therapy.Your feelings are credible.People gaslight you when they disagree.Mindfulness is good for everyone.Everyone has trauma.The reason you can’t focus is ADHD.
This dangerous misinformation encourages well-meaning individuals to make consequential life decisions based on false beliefs, half-truths, and the advice of unlicensed armchair experts. It is time for a professional to call this out. Nucci replaces these myths with liberating truths that can help readers avoid misinformation, navigate important philosophical debates, and better maneuver their own mental health journeys. He shares client examples and evidence-based psychological theory, and draws from reputable studies and research.
TikTok influencers and “life coaches” create viral videos telling people to cut off their problematic parents, and are cheered on by millions of followers. Recent divorcees proudly declare on Instagram that they are finally healing from their “narcissistic” ex-partner, even though you get the sense they can’t actually define that word. Teenage “mental health advocates” lament the struggles of living with autism, but then subtly add that their condition is “self-diagnosed.” It is time for a professional to call out the misinformation and absurdity.
Psychobabble is a must-read book for anyone who values mental health and cares about others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"We need to talk about how we talk about mental health," asserts psychotherapist Nucci in his penetrating if flawed debut. Tackling therapy-related myths popular on social media, he dismantles the idea that everyone needs to go to therapy—a belief that isn't intrinsically harmful but can become so when it draws resources from those in real need of intervention; explains why expressing feelings isn't always wise, especially for those prone to disproportionate emotional responses; and clarifies that not everyone gets depressed and anxious (pathologizing sadness and nervousness can make those normal emotions seem scarier than they are). In refuting these notions, the author sometimes stumbles into what sound like professional gripes with individual mental health influencers or fails to adequately addresses the issues involved. For example, an attempt to debunk the idea that all awkward people are neurodivergent devolves into a critique of how neurodivergence has been wrongly classified as a political and social movement. Still, many of the book's core points—that it's problematic when therapeutic jargon gets warped by the public, that not every therapeutic technique works for every patient, and that symptom overlap makes self-diagnosis a challenge—have merit. The result is a thought-provoking if uneven look at the challenges and complexities of a the public discourse around mental health.
