The medicalization of the world is dehumanizing—and doesn’t work

The medicalization of the world is dehumanizing—and doesn’t work, says Frida Ghitis .

Ghitis: With my father’s death, I felt it was proper that my inner anguish should reveal itself as a physical malady.

She says the pain was not alleviated by darkness nor Tylenol , but that seemed fitting, too.

Far more than even in Illich’s day, most Americans (and the doctors and pharmacists who mind them) seek to evade suffering no matter the resulting costs—a phenomenon expressed most vividly in the false refuge sought in vaccines and masks during the Covid-19 pandemic, which first disrupted civilization as we knew it five years ago this week . I think Illich was right about the overmedicalization of society, and that I was right to understand my migraine as a manifestation of profound woe. Because pain can never be defeated, we can either flee it or make sense of it..