America’s Obsession With Mental Illness Is A Mental Illness

Our culture has an unhealthy obsession with mental illness, and the Lindsay Clancy trial is just the latest reminder. Children and adults alike build their entire personalities around their perceived illnesses, whether by going to therapy five days a week or identifying as transgender. Thank You For Sharing, the newest film from director Sonia Zawitkowski, argues that this alleged crisis is predominantly artificial. The documentary tracks how we invented and gradually expanded the concept of mental health. It exposes how the modern field of medicine, originally centered around soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, has spiralled into an industry that encourages children to take wrong-sex hormones, get hooked on SSRIs, and rebuild their identities around their perceived illness. For decades, the corporate media have pushed the narrative that we are caught in a mental health crisis. As Thank You For Sharing argues, the problem isn’t that mental health doesn’t get enough attention but that it gets far too much attention. The industry is extremely predatory, seeking out vulnerable people and coaxing them into believing they need treatment. In a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services, titled “Wolves in White Coats,” the Trump administration exposed how doctors and other medical professionals encourage young people to pursue transgender procedures. Doctors diagnose their young patients with gender dysphoria, setting them on a path to “transition” that will cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of their lives. The cost of long-term cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries can cost more than $600,000. Throughout Thank You For Sharing, doctors and longtime industry professionals pull back the curtain on the mental health cash cow, revealing how diagnoses such as depression and ADHD became much more common once the insurance-health care racket realized the massive profits from affirming “mental illness.” What Thank You For Sharing addresses best is how Americans’ fixation on mental health has been building for a long time. Part of the blame for our current situation falls on the experts, who developed the field of psychiatry but had very little scientific data backing their diagnostic process. During the second half of the 20th century, when pharmaceutical companies became more profitable, the rates of diagnoses began to climb. In 1950, nearly 580,000 people, or 0.38 percent of the U.S. population, were receiving long-term hospital care for mental illness. By 2022, the number of inpatient hospitalizations for mental health and substance abuse, which often go hand in hand, reached 1.65 million, or 0.5 percent of the population. But measuring only the serious cases doesn’t give the full picture of Americans’ obsession. A whopping 72 percent of Gen Z believe they have a mental illness, with more than 40 percent having received official diagnoses and 60 percent taking pharmaceutical drugs “to help manage their mental health.” The documentary points out how what is considered to be mental illness has expanded over the past century. Doctors and patients alike testify about how fast many therapists and psychiatrists are to pathologize normal human behavior. One industry expert explains that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders cited only about 100 different disorders during its first publication. Today, it lists more than 300. In addition, the supposed symptoms have broadened, allowing for almost any human behavior to fit some criteria for “mental illness.” In the past decade, the DSM has added “illnesses” such as “prolonged grief disorder” and “unspecified mood disorder.” Another recent addition, “stimulant-induced mild neurocognitive disorder,” simply refers to how people who use drugs for a long time are more prone to forgetfulness. Perhaps Thank You For Sharing’s greatest strength is its willingness to call out doctors and health “experts” who have made a fortune convincing people they are ill. In 2025 alone, the U.S. spent about $118 billion on mental health. That number is expected to rise to $159 billion by 2030. More than 14,500 mental health companies currently operate in the U.S., employing more than 750,000 workers. In the documentary, several people reflect on how their perceived mental illness entitled them to victimhood status. This is a trend we see with transgender influencers like Dylan Mulvaney and celebrities like Demi Lovato. Thank You For Sharing shines a light into how public sympathy for neurological disorders gives people permission to behave erratically. It briefly touches on how social media sites such as Tumblr and TikTok have glamorized mental illness. The glorification of mental health has had terrible effects on American youths raised in the tech age; this deserves further investigation. What Thank You For Sharing doesn’t predict is how the mental health field has affected the public’s perception of horrific crimes such as murder. The Lindsay Clancy case is an extreme instance of someone using mental illness as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Although Clancy has admitted to strangling and killing her three children, she has claimed “temporary psychosis” as a reason to avoid consequences. Clancy’s trial has drawn support from thousands of other women, who have expressed sympathy for the violent killer because of her mental health. Thank You For Sharing exposes how the mental health industry thrives off of telling people that all of their worst behaviors can be excused because of “illness.” It explains how a victimhood mentality has eroded our country and our culture. The neuroticism around mental health has enabled children to chop off healthy body parts, prompted the masses to sympathize with a child killer, and coaxed millions of people into thinking they are broken. Brooke Brandtjen is a writer and journalist from Wisconsin who focuses primarily on culture, politics, and religion. She is extremely passionate about the arts and history, and is honored to write for a variety of distinguished publications. CultureDocumentariesGen Zhealth careLGBTlindsay clancymental healthmental illnesspharmaceuticalsPTSDThank You For Sharingtherapytransgender