Affluenza! Is A Kindergartener Rated "Helpful" & Having Self Control the Only True Indicator of Life Success? Are 'High Achieving' School Students At Risk for Psychiatric Disorders & Substance Abuse?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Forty years ago, when I was earning my Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the research seemed clear. Studies back then showed that kids who attended schools in low-income communities were at higher risk for substance abuse, anxiety, and depression, compared with kids who attended schools in more affluent communities. Suniya Luthar, then at Columbia University, was among the first to document a change. Beginning in the late 1990s, she found that the previous association had flipped. In a seminal study published in 1999, Luthar and her Yale colleague Karen D’Avanzo documented that affluent kids were now at higher risk for substance abuse, and scored higher on measures of anxiety and depression, compared with low-income kids. Multiple subsequent studies, including several authored by Luthar, replicated and extended this finding. In 2009, researchers at New York University coined the term “affluenza” to describe this new phenomenon: upper-middle-income and affluent kids now at greater risk for psychiatric disorders and substance abuse compared to their low-income peers. This paragraph comes from the Institute for Family Studies. The article is titled: "When Is the 'Best' School Not the Best?" The author is Leonard Sax. You can read the full article here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/when-is-the-best-school-not-the-best Zac and Don discuss the findings that high achieving schools are not helping students achieve better futures. They wonder if their school district fits within the definition of high achieving. They also wonder if these findings will change how parents and students perceive school.