The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

From our most trusted, compassionate authority on stress, trauma and mental well-being--a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

In the richest, most technically advanced, most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic illnesses were on the rise. Nearly seventy percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, over thirty percent of the population suffers from hypertension. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the increase. So what is really normal when it comes to health?
Over four decades of clinical experience, Gabor Maté has come to recognize this version of normal as misleading, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of life in the modern world, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all its expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, which in turn stresses the body, burdens the immune system and undermines emotional balance.
Now, Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of commonly held myths about what makes us sick, and connects the dots between personal suffering and the pressures of modern-day living. Filled with stories of people in the grip of illness or in the triumphant wake of recovery, The Myth of Normal is Gabor Maté's most life-affirming and urgent book yet.