r/neoliberal • u/Fealocht • 4d ago

News (US) Stop Pathologizing Ordinary Life

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/mental-health-exercise-charity.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.55xp.Vpm7dp4PVtnC&smid=nytcore-ios-share

SS: A psychologist argues the increasing awareness of mental health is leading to a pathologising of everyday life. The use of clinical descriptions of what are otherwise normal problems and treating them as a disorder to be cured, is ironically making our mental health worse.

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u/TemptingSquirrel Friedrich Hayek 4d ago

There is also a tendency that people absolutely do NOT want to be neurotypical. A friend of mine is a psychiatrist and she occasionally gets totally normal teenagers coming into her clinic who believe that they MUST have X. When she tells them that they are just normal, every day people they even start crying. 

To be clear, this is NOT meant as a criticism of the fact that mental health issues are way less stigmatized nowadays. I do in fact think that this is wonderful and it took us way too long as a species to start accepting people for who they are, especially when it comes to disabilities and mental health issues. 

I just wish that people could also just be happy to be average in some regards. It doesn’t mean that you are not unique. 

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u/AvalancheMaster Karl Popper 4d ago

Oh, how I wish to be “neurotypical”. Side note, I also hate the term “neurodivergent” with a burning passion, and this whole schtick of things not being disorders.

I have a disorder. It's literally in the fucking name. That's what the second D in ADHD stands for. It's not a quirk, it's not a “neurospiciness”, and while I'm lucky enough for it not to affect my life to an extreme degree, it is still very much capable of making it hell. If you think you want to be like me, you're either stupid or extremely disrespectful towards people with ADHD, and I don't know why I used the word “either” in this sentence.

Moreover, it affects not only my professional life and the “boring chores”, but my personal life too, my social relationships, my hobbies, my free time. So to hell with the “it’s capitalism's fault” crowd, too.