{"id":58696,"date":"2026-02-05T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=58696"},"modified":"2026-02-04T10:01:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:01:42","slug":"qotd-the-medicalization-of-unhappiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/02\/05\/qotd-the-medicalization-of-unhappiness\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The medicalization of unhappiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>I have noticed the disappearance of the word &#8220;unhappy&#8221; from common usage, and its replacement by the word &#8220;depressed&#8221;. While unhappiness is a state of mind that is clearly the result of the circumstances of one&#8217;s life, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by circumstances beyond one&#8217;s control, or a mixture of both, depression is an illness that is the doctor&#8217;s responsibility to cure. This is so, however one happens to be leading one&#8217;s life. And the doctor, enjoined to pass no judgement that could be interpreted as moral on his patients, has no option but to play along with this deception. The result is the gross over-prescription of medication, without any reduction in unhappiness.<\/p>\n<p>Theodore Dalrymple, interviewed by James Glazov in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/Articles\/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19293\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Our Culture, What&#8217;s Left Of It&#8221;, <em>FrontPage<\/em><\/a>, 2005-08-31.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have noticed the disappearance of the word &#8220;unhappy&#8221; from common usage, and its replacement by the word &#8220;depressed&#8221;. While unhappiness is a state of mind that is clearly the result of the circumstances of one&#8217;s life, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by circumstances beyond one&#8217;s control, or a mixture of both, depression is an illness [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,41],"tags":[243,906,139,1289],"class_list":["post-58696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-quotations","tag-medicine","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychology","tag-theodoredalrymple"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fgI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58696"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100707,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58696\/revisions\/100707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}