[W]ay too much treatment is given to the normal "worried well" who are harmed by it; far too little help is available for those who are really ill and desperately need it. Two thirds of people with severe depression don't get treated for it, and many suffering with schizophrenia wind up in prisons. The writing is on the wall.

Because of diagnostic inflation, an excessive proportion of people have come to rely on antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiaxiety agents, sleeping pills, and pain meds.

It is equally dangerous at either extreme - to have either an expanding concept of mental disorder that eliminates normal or to have an expanding concept of normal that eliminates mental disorder.

We don't have to fully perceive or understand the underlying nature of our world to negotiate it well. Our senses and reasoning powers evolved as they did because they work just fine in the everyday, nonphilosophical business of survival. Mental constructs of reality are imperfect, but indispensable, ways to organize the otherwise bewildering phenomena of the world.