Is Capitalism Making Us Sick?

Micha Frazer-Carroll: When you tell people in casual conversation that you are writing a book on mental health, the first thing they often want to talk about is diagnosis. I think it occupies a really central position in the cultural imagination right now. Lots of people I speak to seem to be coming to a diagnosis as a means of understanding their

I once worked as a writer for a big New York ad agency. Our boss used to tell us: Invent a disease. Come up with the disease, he said, and we can sell the cure. Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing depar

“In classic neoliberal style, ADHD diagnoses shift the responsibility for distraction onto the ‘innocent’ neurobiological individual, rather than addressing an underfunded public education system, privatized healthcare, Big Pharma, unaffordable childcare, and the normalization of competitive individualism.”