That thin line between the Malaise of Living and Mental Illness – Prof. Giordano for “Medicine Highlights”
9 Feb , 2026
In recent years, the boundary between the experience of pain and psychiatric pathology has grown thinner, also due to increased attention to mental disorders, especially in the post-pandemic period.
The term “medicalization of feelings” describes the tendency to transform complex emotions or natural reactions into diseases to be treated with drugs, rather than emotional states to be understood. Social or existential problems thus become medical issues.
Emotions like sadness, anxiety, or grief—which were once experienced as normal—are increasingly diagnosed as disorders.
One example is the shift from the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria to the DSM-5, which eliminated the exclusion of bereavement from major depression diagnosis. As a result, a person suffering from the loss of a loved one can receive a clinical diagnosis in just two weeks.
Research has highlighted the role of pharmaceutical marketing in redefining the “threshold” for mental illness. The narrative of “chemical imbalance”—often oversimplified—promotes the use of drugs at the expense of psychotherapy or social interventions.
Allen Frances, the psychiatrist who authored the DSM-IV, has denounced the “diagnostic inflation” that turns ordinary suffering into mental disorder.
Medicalization alters self-perception.
If sadness is merely a neurochemical malfunction, the influence of environmental factors like stress or loneliness is overlooked.
The medical label can fix a temporary emotional state as a permanent identity and reduce our cultural capacity to tolerate pain, pushing people to seek immediate relief. It is therefore essential to distinguish between true pathology, which requires treatment, and possible existential suffering.
Contemporary science proposes a bio-psycho-social approach that considers neurological levels, personal experiences, and social and economic contexts.
The challenge is not to deny the benefits of drugs, but to restore dignity to human pain, avoiding the treatment of every mood variation as a mechanical failure.
We should ask not only “What’s not working in the brain?” but also “What happened?”
This issue involves power, health, clinical practice, and social policies on a global level.
Credits: This article was originally written in Italian for ilmattino.it
