With millions of Americans taking risky medications for questionable diagnoses, The New York Times asks: have we medicalized everyday life?
A central problem is that medicalized diagnoses often come with medicalized treatments: Our penchant for pills outstrips even our desire for diagnosis. Since the 1990s, the number of office visits for sleep problems has doubled, and diagnoses of insomnia have increased sevenfold. But prescriptions for sleep medications have increased more than 30 times.
