The feud sparked by All That Remains frontman Phil Labonte‘s claim that “therapy is for women” has escalated, with the singer now firing back directly at former Cradle Of Filth keyboardist Lindsay Schoolcraft, who had publicly torn into his stance on men’s mental health.
Labonte, an outspoken right-wing musician and political commentator, drew widespread attention earlier this month while appearing on “Today’s Boondoggle Podcast“. Discussing his 2024 Fox News op-ed about what he describes as a crisis facing men and boys, the singer argued that men benefit more from action and purpose than from talking through their struggles. He tied the issue to falling rates of male college attendance, growing disengagement from society, and rising rates of depression and suicide among men.
In the podcast, Labonte laid out his position in stark terms.
“Suicide among men my age — 50 and above — the rates are up. Men have to have meaning. Men need something to do. The idea that men can go to therapy and that’s gonna solve their problems is ridiculous. Therapy is for women. Men don’t solve their problems by talking. Men solve their problems through action. So men should be doing things with other men, like building things, going out and fixing cars, whatever it is. But those kind of activities are what will help a man feel accomplished, help a man feel like he’s got purpose. Just going and talking to a therapist, that’s not what fixes men. That’s not what fixes men at all. Men need goals that are achievable, and they need to make progress to those goals. That kind of stuff is what will help a man feel empowered, feel good about himself. That’s the kind of stuff that men need. And the idea that all of society is telling men, ‘Oh, you should be more like women,’ or, ‘You should go to therapy,’ none of these things help men. And the evidence is in the statistics. The evidence is in the suicide rate. It’s in the depression rate. It’s in the fact that men are checking out from society. These ideas don’t work for men because men and women are not the same. And this is not in any way an attack on women, but men and women need to be treated as if they are men and women. They’re two different, different psychologies. And that’s not to say that there aren’t men with more feminine characteristics or women with more masculine characteristics, but broadly, men are different than women, and they need different things to make them feel emotionally fulfilled and psychologically acceptable.”
The comments drew sharp criticism from Schoolcraft, whose latest solo album, Harrowing, released June 19, 2026, deals with her own experiences with mental health struggles and surviving narcissistic abuse. In an interview with Blabbermouth, she rejected Labonte‘s framing outright.
“He’s not a healthcare professional, he’s not a psychologist, he’s not a therapist,” she said.
She continued, drawing on her own life to make her point.
“This is my opinion and I’m not a professional either — I have a lot of male friends in therapy and it’s done them a world of wonder and has transformed their lives because you can do healing work and then you can do growing work, and there’s life coaching. You can come out on the other side. You don’t have to struggle.”
Schoolcraft called the message a damaging one.
“Discouraging people from going to therapy, especially men — that’s an extremely toxic, masculine view that is ultimately an opinion from the patriarchy that has done a lot of damage to society and is the reason why it’s crumbling right now,” she said.
She also took a personal swipe at Labonte, suggesting he was the one in need of help.
“Discouraging people from going to therapy, especially men — that’s an extremely toxic, masculine view that is ultimately an opinion from the patriarchy that has done a lot of damage to society and is the reason why it’s crumbling right now. I don’t know… I think he probably does need to go to therapy and is a scared little boy who cares too much about the scared little boy inside, his inner child and is scared of what his macho homies are going to think of him.”
Drawing a comparison to physical medicine, Schoolcraft stressed that seeking help should carry no stigma.
“There should be no shame in getting help. If your brain is broken, you need a doctor. If you broke a bone, you’re not going to leave the bone broken; you’re going to get help. You’re not going to get a Band-Aid. You’re going to get it reset and cast and x-rayed. That’s what therapy is. It’s healing the brain. But I don’t think that’s a very good message, especially for young men who could be struggling.”
On Saturday, June 22, Labonte posted a video to his X (formerly Twitter) account replying to a story about Schoolcraft‘s comments. Rather than soften his position, he stood firmly behind it, arguing his words had been misread.
“Last week I was on a podcast, and it got to the topic of mental health and stuff. And I said that therapy is for women. Now, studies have shown that therapy does actually work better for women, that men have a lower success rate, for a variety of different reasons. And that really upset people — like, this true thing that I said, really upset people. There were a lot of people that were coming to my X page and really worked up, and there were a lot of people that even went to the band’s Instagram page. And most of the time they were saying basically straw man arguments, saying that, ‘Oh, you don’t think that men should talk about their problems. You don’t think that men should do this,’ and da, da, da. I didn’t say that. I said that therapy is for women,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He then addressed the personal nature of much of the criticism, including Schoolcraft‘s remarks.
“But there was another thing that happened a lot, and it was a lot of people were doing ad hominems, like this particular lady here, Lindsay. I don’t know her at all. But there was a lot of people that said, ‘Oh, he needs therapy.’ They were ad hominem saying, ‘You’re a little boy,’ blah, blah, blah. ‘You shouldn’t be saying these things,’ and, ‘You’re just a scared little boy, and you should go to therapy.’ And I’m, like, ‘Why are you saying that I should go to therapy?’ I’ve already told you, therapy’s for women.”
While Labonte frames therapy as something that works better for women and pushes purpose-driven action as the answer for men, Schoolcraft and many of his critics argue that messaging like his risks keeping struggling men from getting help they may badly need. Neither figure is a mental health professional, and both have framed their comments as personal opinion.
i said what i said https://t.co/sm12lbY1Qs pic.twitter.com/L6QbL95ZLG
— Phil Labonte 🇺🇸 (@philthatremains) June 21, 2026
