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The Toxic Consequences of Attending a High Achieving School

Achievement pressure promotes mental anguish at the so-called “best schools.”

Remarkably, she found that levels of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse (including alcohol and hard drugs) were even higher among these presumably “privileged” young people than they were among the teens from poverty (Luthar & Latendresse, 2005). In one study, encompassing nine high achieving schools, some private and some public, they found rates of clinically significant levels of anxiety and depression were six to seven times the national average for people in that age range (Luthar, Kumar & Zillmer, 2020). One study showed that rates of clinically significant alcohol and drug dependence, among graduates of HASs, were two to three times as high as the national average throughout college and for at least several years beyond (Luthar, Small, & Ciciolla, 2018).

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