Catherine Liu explains that mental disorders are now primarily claimed by the upper middle class, masking other forms of suffering as they seek to optimize themselves under capitalism.
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The article discusses the increasing tendency to self-diagnose mental disorders such as anxiety, autism, depression and ADHD and to perceive small incidents as traumatic.
DIE ZEIT: Anxiety, autism, depression, ADHD, everyone seems to be busy diagnosing their own suffering; even small incidents are perceived as traumatic. Why does mental suffering have such an attraction in the present?
Catherine Liu: I think this appeal is especially for the upper middle class elites. Mental disorders have become somewhat "gentrified" and are now occupied almost entirely by members of the middle class, who suffer from even the slightest exposure in a world in which they have only one goal: to optimize themselves for competition under capitalism. Their suffering thereby covers up all other forms of suffering.
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