No

The best therapist I've known had a neat little cross-stitich on her lobby wall that said:

"Normal is just a setting on your washing machine."

Every mode of human thought and behavior is represented by a spectrum. There is never a clear boundary between normality and mental illness.

Sounds like a great pharma tagline

Here's my similar shower thought: NOBODY is neurotypical. Neurotypical is just the theoretical exact middle of every personality. It's a completely average person, but nobody fits the description.

I'm not necessarily sure if that can be correct, depending on the definition. If you are defining a disease or disorder as being abnormal, then perhaps it may have a case there. But many diseases and disorders are defined by whether or not a trait disrupts quality of life. A person may be abnormal, but it doesn't affect how they live. Therefore, no disease. With this definition, many people can be normal

Normal is when the crazy you have doesn't impact your ability to function in society. So no. Not everyone struggles daily to exist.

I've thought this was the case for awhile now but there is some push back to this line of thought these days.

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up Abigail Shrier Swift Press, Feb 27, 2024 - Social Science - 288 pages From the author of Irreversible Damage, an investigation into how mental health overdiagnosis is harming, not helping, children

'A pacy, no-holds barred attack on mental health professionals and parenting experts ... thought-provoking' Financial Times

'A message that parents, teachers, mental health professionals and policymakers need to hear' New Statesman

In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z's mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not helped the staggering number of kids who are lonely, lost, sad and fearful of growing up. What's gone wrong?

In Bad Therapy, bestselling investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the problem isn't the kids – it's the mental health experts. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with child psychologists, parents, teachers and young people themselves, Shrier explores the ways the mental health industry has transformed the way we teach, treat, discipline and even talk to our kids. She reveals that most of the therapeutic approaches have serious side effects and few proven benefits: for instance, talk therapy can induce rumination, trapping children in cycles of anxiety and depression; while 'gentle parenting' can encourage emotional turbulence – even violence – in children as they lash out, desperate for an adult to be in charge.

Mental health care can be lifesaving when properly applied to children with severe needs, but for the typical child, the cure can be worse than the disease. Bad Therapy is a must-read for anyone questioning why our efforts to support our kids have backfired – and what it will take for parents to lead a turnaround.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Bad_Therapy.html?id=5FfUEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description

I'm not sick! I'm not sick! I'm really not sick!

Currently reading Nobodys Normal by anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker.

It's a hard read as I'm constantly googling how he did his research. But I do absolutely agree with his theory that "normal" assumes there's a baseline of what that looks like. And that data is impossible to get at the current time, only when you look back on it.

For example, we have data to identify what normal can look like in 1920 based on averages. But it'll be pretty racist and not what people want to hear, and it's also missing a lot like accurate health records and the huge percentage of people who were misdiagnosed or undocumented.

Overall, I agree. There is no normal.

• phycologists, probably

Get help if you have serious issues like depression. However, pretty much everyone has ADHD by the standards of some of these professionals. It starts to go from legitimate need to making people feel special.

Well my friends are normal, your friends are weird