Mindsets and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Why It’s Not For Everyone
Often we may think that mental illness is so often misunderstood due to how rare it is, but that idea could not be further from wrong. The National Alliance of Mental Illness, NAMI, actually found:
1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year
1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year
1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6–17 experience a mental health disorder each year
50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24
Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10–34
Mental illness is so prevalent, yet why is it still so overlooked? Even in a book solely based on improving your mind, the disorders that alter or disturb the mind, are overlooked, if not simplified into oblivion.
In the book “Mindsets”, Carol Dweck presents her research findings on the “growth mindset” in a way designed to focus on its mental health benefits. Specifically, Carol Dweck argues that the advice in the book she offers can improve your relationships, grades, and overall life. As the author themselves puts it, “people who’ve changed [mindsets] can tell you how their lives have been enhanced”, concluding her book on the positive results others have achieved through her guidance. Although some people believe external factors can contribute to their growth or lack thereof, Dweck insists that “experience, training, and personal effort” have the final say when it comes to self-improvement. In sum, then, her view is that no matter what cards you are dealt, your life can be improved through following her growth mindset. I have mixed feelings when it comes to the message she is trying to deliver in Mindsets, due to it directly conflicting with, if not completely disregarding, my life experiences as someone who is not mentally or financially well-off.
As someone who’s had depression considered “not worth diagnosing” for the past few years, I consider myself qualified enough to speak on the topic of mental illness and provide my own experiences. The way mental illness affects every individual differently, ultimately sets the scene for treatment of these illnesses to be very personalized overall. It can come as a shock to many to hear that there is not just one solution for these complications and that mental illness doesn’t have a singular tried-and-true method that works for everyone. Different environments and the factors that come with them may contribute to someone’s problems and Dweck trying to recommend everyone to use the same advice as a catch-all for life problems is misguided. That, on top of the fact that she actively encourages a positive “growth” spin on all her scenarios, while simultaneously labelling people “card-carrying pessimist[‘s]” when they do not, or possibly cannot, live her same lifestyle.
In my view, the types of scenarios that Dweck provides are disregarding a large audience, the mentally ill and those who lack resources. For instance, her “CHANGING MINDSETS: A WORKSHOP” chapter was full of scenarios in which a growth mindset improves lives, a few of which I could not relate nor knew anyone who could in any capacity. Or some scenarios, like her “The Number One Draft Choice” scenario, where I can’t help but wonder what her growth-step would have been if it hadn’t been as simple. The pressure that the quarterback in the scenario feels is all self-imposed, and they ultimately have a community to fall back on. Not everyone has a community of people who feel and share the same experiences they do, and yet, many of Dweck’s scenarios rely on that idea. Nor are all problem’s self-imposed, which many scenarios tend to rely on as well. Dweck only set up scenarios that deal with internal battles, which only leaves the impression that the growth mindset won’t improve every situation, unlike what she’s claimed prior. Similarly to the issues with cognitive behavioral therapy, the growth mindset only works for those who are experiencing little to no external struggles.
A scenario which does explore an issue imposed by external sources, does so in a way that brings up a different issue in Dweck’s perspective. “Effort Gone Awry”, is a scenario about an overachieving daughter who throws up from stress every morning. At first you wonder, how will a growth mindset come into play here? Then, the growth mindset actually doesn’t play much of a role at all. Who knew that a tutor, counselor, and some intervention could improve the girl’s situation? Surely it is the work of the growth mindset that brought this change! Dweck ultimately gives too much credit to herself and her growth mindset, in this scenario, and throughout the book. The “growth-mindset step” was ultimately just the counselor telling the parent what to do to improve the situation. Dweck seems to prefer concluding scenarios with how her growth mindset improved lives instead of acknowledging that a tutor, counselor, and intervention would likely improve any situation, with or without her input there.
Some might object, of course, on the grounds that Dweck did in fact acknowledge mental illness in her “Mindset and Depression” section. While that may be correct, I would argue that this section only uses depression as another stepping stone for what the growth mindset can do, rather than mentioning any details on how difficult it may have been for these students to improve.
You may rebuttal that the section covered a study, and that I cannot use my personal opinion to deny the facts of what happened. This is where I’d mention that for the “growth- mindset” students with depression, what they have is called high-functioning depression. It is not any better than the “fixed-mindset” depression, which is literally just depression, but Dweck believes the “fixed mindset” is the cause. For high-functioning depression the symptoms just aren’t as visible, or they may be able to present as normal for the public, and collapse later on. The people with high-functioning depression are not doing any better than those with regular depression, arguably, they could be doing worse due to suffering silently in private, with no one knowing what’s really going on. Those with high-functioning depression have to deal with depression while also dealing with not being seen, or ignored, shut down. As long as the grades are okay, “then you’re not depressed”, even though grades are arguably the least accurate measure of happiness.
In one of Dweck’s paragraph’s she tells a story where this exactly happens, a person with high-functioning depression asks for help, and is told they couldn’t possibly have depression. Her afterword response? “Yes, he was depressed,” followed by a but, there is no “but” in whether someone has depression or not. Whether he copes with studying or crying makes no difference in the amount he is suffering. Telling people that they’re not really depressed, or that their depression isn’t that bad, is one of the worst things you could do. It leaves them spiraling with thoughts like “What if I’m overreacting?”, “What if I am just doing this for attention?”, and those thoughts are isolating. It makes you feel like your issues don’t matter, that it’s not even a real problem. There are so many cases of suicide where no one sees it coming, because they were so “successful”, had the best grades, and even smiled sometimes. The issue is so many people ask about school, grades, and leave it at that. Especially for those with high-functioning depression, you have to initiate that conversation, you have to be kind, and you have to let them know that their struggles are real and that it wouldn’t make you value them less if they did slip up one day.
The “happy thoughts bring a happy life” sentiment that Dweck seems to advocate is not unheard of. When it comes to the topic of positive thinking, most of us will readily agree that it’s a good thing to try to be doing. Where this agreement usually ends, however, Is on the question of whether it can help in every situation. Whereas some are convinced that positive thoughts bring about a more positive life, others maintain that the advice often only works in theory. Encouraging positive thinking is not terrible advice, it’s the basis for cognitive behavioral therapy, which is helpful for many, just not everyone. Dweck claims “it does not escort them out of the framework of judgment and into the framework of growth”, when arguing why cognitive behavioral therapy falls short in comparison to having a growth mindset, but ignores her own shortcomings. In fact, Mindsets share the same shortcomings with cognitive behavioral therapy, mainly, not acknowledging outside factors as contributors to mental detriment. Both the growth mindset and cognitive behavioral therapy solely focus on what the individual can do to change, instead of considering what environment caused them to be in that situation in the first place.
Overall, then, I believe Dweck is missing a large audience by leaving the complete struggles of mental illness unaddressed — an important point to make given that she, like many others, are “vitally interested in depression” and mental illness, yet no one goes through the work of sitting down and talking to someone about how they navigate through life and the hurdles they have to go through. These conclusions in Dweck’s book have had significant applications in schools as well as in therapies and it’s important to point out flaws so that the future education and rehabilitation system could produce healthier, happier, brighter people.
