The Myth of Normal 9

Amid spectacular economic, technological, and medical resources, it induces countless humans to suffer illness born of stress, ignorance, inequality, environmental degradation, climate change, poverty, and social isolation. It allows millions to die prematurely of diseases we know how to prevent or of deprivations we have more than enough resources to eliminate. In the United States, the richest country in history and the epicenter of the globalized economic system, 60 percent of adults have a chronic disorder such as high blood pressure or diabetes, and over 40 percent have two or more such conditions. [4] Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. [5] In my own country, Canada, up to half of all baby boomers are on track for hypertension within a few years if current trends continue. [6] Among women there is a disproportionate elevation in diagnoses of potentially disabling autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis (MS). [7] Among the young, non-smoking-related cancers seem to be on the rise. Rates of obesity, along with the multiple health risks it poses, are going up in many countries, including in Canada, Australia, and notably the United States, where over 30 percent of the adult population meet the criteria. Recently Mexico has surpassed its northern neighbor in that unenviable category, with the result that thirty-eight Mexicans are diagnosed with diabetes every hour. Thanks to globalization, Asia is catching up. “China has entered the era of obesity,” Ji Chengye, a child health researcher in Beijing, reported. “The speed of growth is shocking.”[8] Throughout the Western world, mental health diagnoses are escalating among the young, in adults, and among the elderly. In Canada, depression and anxiety are the fastest-growing diagnoses; and in 2019 more than fifty million Americans, over 20 percent of U.S. adults, suffered an episode of mental illness. [9] In Europe, according to the authors of a recent international survey, mental disorders have become “the largest health challenge of the 21st century.”[10] Millions of North American children and youths are being medicated with stimulants, antidepressants, and even antipsychotic drugs whose long-term effects on the developing brain are yet to be established—a perilous social experiment in the chemical control of young people’s brains and behavior. A chilling 2019 headline on the online news site ScienceAlert