Deconstructing Scandinavia's "Achievement Generation": A Youth Mental Health Crisis?

‘This is an eye-opening analysis that investigates alarmism on the one hand, and a neglect of young people’s problems on the other. There is much to learn from here for all of us who are interested in the complex relationships between society, culture and mental life.’
—Svend Brinkmann, Aalborg University, Denmark
‘This book is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary social science and a must read for everybody who wants to understand the social and psychological processes that are involved in the Scandinavian efforts to reach the goal of an “optimized” society.’
—Jaan Valsiner, Aalborg University, Denmark, and the Estonian Academy of Sciences

In this book, Professor Ole Jacob Madsen analyses the implications of Scandinavia's current concern for the mental health problems of adolescents, said to be struggling in the face of increasing demands for achievement and success. It critically examines our understanding of this so-called “achievement generation”, questioning whether today’s youth are really worse off than previous generations and how we have come to believe that this is so.The author’s wide-ranging investigation draws on a large body of research, as well as considering socio-political, historical and regional factors that might be affecting the resilience and mental health among young people. It also provides original psycholinguistic studies of popular media concepts associated with these issues including: “the achievement generation”, “pathological perfection” and “the good girl syndrome”.
Deconstructing Scandinavia’s “Achievement Generation” presents an engaging contribution to key debates around therapeutic culture and society in the 21st century. It will appeal to students and scholars of critical and social psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy; as well as to those working in education, social work and mental health.

Ole Jacob Madsen is Professor of Cultural and Community Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway. His previous works include: The Therapeutic Turn: How Psychology Altered Western Culture (2014), Optimizing the Self: Social Representations of Self-Help (2015) and The Psychologization of Society: On the Unfolding of the Therapeutic in Norway (2018) and The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures (2020).