One of the consequences of the widespread promotion of mental-health catastrophism is that being mentally ill is fast becoming the new normal. This is especially true among mental-health proponents’ main target: the young. Indeed, over the past couple of decades there has been a constant stream of reports and publications claiming that children and young people have never been as anxious, depressed and insecure as they are today. Hence among the media and policymakers, the narrative of a ‘generation in crisis’ has firmly taken hold.  Of course, a sense of alienation and existential insecurity has long characterised being young, from the Romantics to the Beats. What has changed, however, is that youthful angst and insecurity has both been medicalised and, increasingly, inflated. 

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