The Myth of Normal 10

speaks for itself: “Child Suicide Attempts Are Skyrocketing in the US, and Nobody Knows Why.”[11] The picture is similarly stark in the U.K., where the Guardian recently reported, “British universities are experiencing a surge in student anxiety, mental breakdowns and depression.”[12] As globalization envelops the world, conditions hitherto found in “developed” countries are finding their way into new venues. ADHD among children, for example, has become “an increasing public health concern” in China. [13] The climate catastrophe already afflicting us has introduced an entirely new health hazard, a magnified version—if that is possible—of the existential threat that nuclear war has posed since Hiroshima. “Distress about climate change is associated with young people perceiving that they have no future, that humanity is doomed,” found the authors of a 2021 survey of the attitudes of over ten thousand individuals in forty-two countries. Along with a sense of betrayal and abandonment by governments and adults, such despondence and hopelessness “are chronic stressors which will have significant, long-lasting and incremental negative implications on the mental health of children and young people.”[14] Casting ourselves as the organisms in the laboratory analogy, these and other metrics indicate unmistakably that ours is a toxic culture. Worse yet, we have become accustomed—or perhaps better to say acculturated—to so much of what plagues us. It has become, for lack of a better word, normal. In medical practice, the word “normal” denotes, among other things, the state of affairs we doctors aim for, setting the boundaries delineating health from disease. “Normal levels” and “normal functioning” are our goal when we apply treatments or remedies. We also gauge success or failure against “statistical norms”; we reassure worried patients that this symptom or that side effect is completely normal, as in “to be expected.” These are all specific and legitimate uses of the word, enabling us to assess situations realistically so that we can aim our efforts appropriately. It is not in these senses that this book’s title refers to “normal,” but rather in a more insidious one that, far from helping us progress toward a healthier future, cuts such an endeavor off at the pass.