In short, there is a documented history of profit making entities using marketing to turn normal aspects of the human experience into diagnosable medical illnesses. When you take a normal part of the human condition and manipulate it into a “disease” this is called medicalization. See a summary of medicalization: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01145_1.x

One such example is the invention of anxiety disorder. That’s correct: it was invented… In the late 80s a pharmaceutical company discovered a Xanax style drug that dampened feelings of anxiety and arousal. Then they realized there could be a massive market for it. So they worked with a top advertising agency to position shyness and nervousness around people as “social anxiety disorder.” Likely throw in a few million dollars of lobbying money to politicians associated with the FDA – and the rest is history. Here is an external more formal account of this history: DOI:10.1007/978-94-007-4276-5_4

Here is an in depth exploration of medicalizing the human experience.

Maybe we're already alright: Medicalizing the human experience

Keywords & Nodes

• culture
• Perceptions are not reality. The mind brings forth a world.
• Prevalence Inflation describes how people (especially youth) can consume so much information about mental health disorders that they begin to process normal qualities of human experience as mental illness.
• External factors prime us to feel and behave certain ways.
• “People’s lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group.” — Tony Robbins
• therapy
• mental health