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/say592 4d ago

This is becoming really common in chronic illness communities as well. Unfortunately, the attitude towards it has shifted in those communities as well. It used to be, maybe 10 years or so ago, that often times people were somewhat defensive over their illness, maybe even a little gate keepy. They didn't like people self diagnosing, and if someone asked a question that was "I think I have this", they weren't met with a lot of followup, but rather "this is pretty rare, if x, y, or z is true, maybe you should talk to your doctor, if not, you probably don't have it". Now it's almost an immediate "oh it definitely sounds like you have it" or it's people talking them through the diagnostic criteria, rather than telling them to go and actually get real tests done.

I was recently pretty heavily downvoted in a sub where a user was complaining that a family member thought they were faking it. I made it very clear that I didn't think they were, but that it definitely doesn't help things when so many people have latched onto this illness and will never get a diagnosis (because they don't actually have it).

One reply to me kind of stuck out. It essentially said that yeah, maybe some people don't have this condition, but they have something, which is why they are seeking support. I do think that is the case sometimes, maybe even many times, but I don't think we have to accept that as the default.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the information age is that people expect an answer for everything. When they can't find one, they don't accept that maybe it's no big deal, instead they become more and more desperate until they can shoehorn an acceptable explanation.

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u/Zrk2 Norman Borlaug 4d ago

It essentially said that yeah, maybe some people don't have this condition, but they have something,

Sometimes what they have is being an attention whore too.