Is Capitalism Making Us Sick?

The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high.

Socially and politically, we’re promoting policies, regulations and lifestyles that are making people ill to such a degree that stress, trauma and anxiety are being woven through and through the social fabric. Indeed there is a strong case to say that stress, anxiety and depression are, in fact, the entirely appropriate response to a world in which

It’s not an accident that doing business today, and being in the workforce today, is more stressful than it used to be. Peter Whybrow, in his book American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, argues that many of the ills that we suffer from today have very little to do with the bad food we’re eating or the partially hydrogenated oils in our diet. Rathe

What is new is that today, in our secular, individualistic nation, an amorphous illness is seen inevitably as an opportunity to uncover the authentic nature of the self and improve it, a project squarely in line with other obsessions of our neoliberal society.