I’m Always Worried When Something Experienced By More Than Half the Population is Categorized as an "Illness"

Just like medicalizing the female body (sure, women are over half the population, but their bodies are “weird” and “other”. Huh?)…

In a report released last week, researchers estimated that more than half of Americans would develop mental disorders in their lives, raising questions about where mental health ends and illness begins.

In fact, psychiatrists have no good answer, and the boundary between mental illness and normal mental struggle has become a battle line dividing the profession into two viscerally opposed camps.

Or maybe our society’s so fucked up that we’re *causing* mental disorders?

Oh, sorry, that’s not gonna fly… everybody has to be HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY to get up and work a shitty job they hate all day so they can eat crap food and then get pissed on by friends and media for being fat and ugly and unacceptable and then they can’t buy the right clothes, they’re not married yet, OH dear GOD, I FORGOT TO HAVE CHILDREN, there’s no money in a 401(K), everyone tells them they’re behind, behind, behind in the rat race, WHY DON’T YOU LIKE LIVING IN CITIES??, crime is UP, their vision sucks, they’re UGLY dorks, and should DIE DIE DIE… And they WILL because every day on tv you read all about the HORRIBLE things that happen to pretty, affluent young white girls EVERY DAY. And if it could happen to THEM it could happen to YOU.

Um. Yea.

Where’s the wiggle room for “normal human variation”? The more we move toward a society that’s supposed to think, act, look, and experience everything in exactly the same way, the more worried I get.

Maybe it’s not the people who are fucked up. In fact, maybe what everybody’s exhibiting are normal reactions to excessive stress.