Critical social justice and its cognitive distortions: Diagnosing the Liberal's poor mental health.

This article provides an alternative explanation for potential causes behind the rise in psychiatric diagnoses and poorer mental health outcomes for people who identify as liberal or left-leaning in the United States. Borrowing the concept of cognitive distortions from the well-established psychotherapy modality Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as an analytical tool, this article argues that various strands of the prevailing ideology of Critical Social Justice (CSJ), born out of the liberal left, is infused with various kinds of cognitive distortions, suggesting that CSJ effectively promulgates "reverse CBT" throughout higher education and the larger socio-cultural ethos.