Comment by pluralmonad 3 days ago
The US is heavily over-medicated, for sure. The pharma reps are very intimate with our doctors and it expresses as one might expect. If you go to the doc with nearly any significant complaint, you will very likely come away with some drugs. But it is not all doctors; people want easy fixes that do not require any change in habits. Not an easy problem to solve, systemically.
Its easy to say anything. Doing the correct thing is not always easy. I think your last statement is woefully outdated. The current zeitgeist is lack of agency. Its like collectively many of us have shifted from an internal to an external locus of control. This is due to a variety of reasons, a big one of which is the internet empowering people to make themselves feel insignificant due to unhealthy scale. I'd write a book if I continued, but that's the just of it, I suppose.
>people want easy fixes that do not require any change in habits
Because it's easy to say change your habits when the problems are systematic as you say. Cutting yourself off social media, or stopping watching the news isn't easy. Being bullied/stressed about work and not having other work options isn't easily dealt with. Being bombarded with advertising telling you that you suck is not something you can personally deal with.
The US especially has this idea that we're all rugged individualists and any problem we have is our own and not one created by the larger society around us and therefor communal solutions are bad, and you should toughen up.