[aadri]

That's an interesting point. But this overzealous diagnosis is made (from what I see) essentially in the United States, which is where the disease was theorized.

Yes, over-diagnosing a particular disease that has no equivalent (in the same proportions) accross the Atlantic is clearly a cultural marker.

Add to that the existence of a medication industry that needs this disease to exist and you'll see why the cultural belief gets self-reinforced.

Medical knowledge has a normative effect on reality (we build knowledge over the experienced reality but the knowledge has then an effect over reality in the way it is read and shared): that's why in the right conditions, new diseases can be created through a scientific process.

A hundred years ago we treated female hysteria as a normal deasease, in ways that are now considered catastrophic and extremely machist. At the time, all doctors were men. Now we know this diagnosis is bullshit.

Medicine happens in society: in a particular social context in time and space. And we should bring the same distant look over our occidental medecine as over any other remote ("traditional", as we say) culture, like the ones in the article.