Over the past decade, I’ve worked in two therapeutic day school environments—a school focused on behavioural issues and a school focused on mental health. Both schools offer additional student support, such as therapeutically trained teachers, classroom aids, learning specialists, in-school therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, to create an environment where the student can access both academics and therapy. These schools understand that regular school districts often cannot properly support students with a constellation of special needs, especially acute behavioural and mental health needs.

Therapeutic schools have operated under the radar for most people but have recently become the subject of increased debate. Critics put forward a plethora of arguments going so far as to claim the rise of therapeutic education as an existential threat, and their arguments can be boiled down to two simple concerns: 1) a therapeutic or social-emotional education ultimately crowds out an academic education; and 2) that these approaches lead to overdiagnosis and pathologize normal emotions, which, in turn, lead children to become overly concerned with the self. Ecclestone and Hayes, in their provocative book, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, write, “The wish and the will to change the world characterizes humanity; to turn humanity inwards is to diminish all our selves.” In other words, children are becoming too emotional and self-absorbed. These criticisms have merit to some degree, but the reality of therapeutic education is more nuanced and complex.