
Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

Views like these lead readily to what is sometimes referred to as “illness behavior.” We begin to build our psychological life around our preoccupations with our illness, injury, or disability, while the rest of our life is on hold and unfortunately atrophying along with the body.
Jon Kabat-Zinn • Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation
We tend to see mental health as “being normal”—happy, realistic, fulfilled.
Nassir Ghaemi • A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

In spite of compelling evidence to the contrary, we continue to treat symptoms as if they are caused by a “broken brain” in which deficiencies or “imbalances” of serotonin and other neurotransmitters are regarded by modern psychiatry as sufficient explanations of mental illness.