It’s official. All the progressive “social justice issue” nonsense saturating the network media is literally driving people crazy. Therapists are so overwhelmed by it that they’re diving off the deep end, too. The New York Times started off the New Year with a surprise dose of shock therapy. The results of their own survey stunned them enough to yell for professional help by pulling the nearest alarm activator.
All aboard the crazy train
Tara Parker-Pope is the “Well columnist” at the Times and she’s had the article idea brewing for a long time. Since 2020 seemed like the “year of the virus,” and 2021 the “year of the vaccine,” she pondered what she could write about 2022.
Her “gut told her that the next several years could tell a story of recovery.” There was likely to be a focus on “learning to live with the virus and of the collateral damage that the pandemic has caused.” As she glanced at the project board of articles her colleagues were working on, most involved people going totally crazy. “It seemed really clear that a big part of that story” was going to be “mental health.”
The Times prides themselves on accuracy, even though they bought the whole Christopher Steele dirty dossier fantasy fiction bait. Hook, line, and sinker. They won’t give back their Pulitzer when busted for it though.
They didn’t want more lawsuits, so before they wrote a word, the whole editorial team discussed it and they decided to survey mental health professionals. What they found out drove them crazy.
After thinking long and hard about what questions to ask the therapists, Ms. Parker-Pope learned the valuable lesson of never asking questions that you don’t want to hear the answers to. “I reached out to different people in the psychology community and asked them for advice and guidance and feedback on it.” People are going crazy in record numbers and one of the biggest reasons why are all the “social justice issues.”
All she wanted to do was “poll mental health professionals to find out what they thought about long-lasting mental health implications of Covid-19.” The answers were unexpectedly overwhelming.
Helping others cope
One of the things that the Times wanted to know was how therapists were “bearing as they helped others cope.” They aren’t. The survey was passed out to “Psychology Today’s professional membership” and they got 1,320 responses.
It took two months to finalize the study and the results drove them crazy. They were horrified when they saw the psych-lab test results and ran screaming for the spin doctors. “The team realized they needed an experienced data journalist to help them parse through the insights.” The “lesson is that the therapists are shouldering the entire burden of this mental health crisis,” Ms. Parker-Pope warns. “They’re really on their own. And they’re basically saying: ‘We can’t keep doing this. We can’t carry this alone.'”
They hired PR professional Mónica Cordero Sancho to find patterns and trends in the crazy data. She turned it into a glitzy Hollywood style presentation of propaganda, designed to deliver the maximum of effect when unleashed at the unsuspecting public. After sorting through the answers to 15 multiple choice questions, they reported the answers to two of them.
“Nine out of 10 therapists said the number of clients seeking care was on the rise.” No surprise there. “About one in seven of the respondents cited social justice issues as a top reason that clients were seeking therapy.” They’re silent on the other 13.
“What really struck me” Parker-Pope relates, “was the consistency. Therapists in all 50 states had grave concerns.” Folks are going crazy everywhere. “Older people, people of color, younger people, conservatives, liberals.” They “had also added open-ended questions.” The one that really drove the Times team nuts was an answer to one they didn’t ask. “We didn’t ask a question about therapist burnout, but it was clear in the comments.” Two “photo editors, Gina Privitere and Christy Harmon, set up 10 photo shoots across the country.” In a big hurry. “Meanwhile, Jaspal Riyait, the Times art director on the package,says her team brought the visuals to life in three days.” It’s a stunner, too.
At the top of the digital presentation, words like ‘lonely’ and ‘uncertain,’ which were pulled from the survey results, cascade down the article as readers scroll; those words were designed by the interactive designer Danny DeBelius with emotional resonance in mind: It’s ‘like our version of a word cloud,’ Ms. Riyait said. “The most common words — anxious, overwhelmed — appear the largest.”
