For our latest video, FAIR’s Christine Sefein explains how her field of psychotherapy has been taken over by what she describes as a “divisive and regressive ideology” that led her to resign from her position as a professor of clinical psychology at Antioch University in Los Angeles. (Taken from the FAIR newsletter issued on December 2nd)

This ideology teaches people to see themselves as part of an oppressed group and to blame their hardships on oppressor groups. And sometimes that’s true! But most often this way of thinking, which encourages hypersensitivity, is harmful to people who are seeking help from mental illness conditions.

Sefein worries that her field, which is designed to help people overcome their mental illnesses, will actually exacerbate patients’ symptoms by causing them to view themselves as having no control over improving their situation. Instead, people are acquiring an attitude called “learned hopelessness,” which locks them into a feedback loop of pessimism and despair.