[Gormo]

I get your point re distigmatizing mental illness, but why have we accepted the medicalization of normal emotional and cognitive aspects of human life? I don't understand how things like fear, frustration, or sadness have ended up being subsumed within the mantle of "mental illness" in the first place.

[Eleison23]

Several reasons, but one major watershed is because it was viewed as "more humane" to drug us rather than restrain us with shackles or strait-jackets. Invisible chemical restraints are more palatable to the general public, and produce much better income streams for the producers.

[Gormo]

What? How did being "restrained", either via straitjackets or via drugs, ever enter the conversation about people dealing with the routine stresses of life?