I don’t know if it’s so much mental illness - though there is that percentage at work for sure - as much as the transformation of medicine into a virtual religion, and that is very recent 20th century occurrence.

When “health benefits” became attached to jobs, suddenly people felt almost an obligation to take advantage of them. It became an obsession with some, at the least an annual ritual to lay your body before the exalted doctors to pronounce you “well” or with defect. And the amount of people I would see from work go to the doctor for every splinter or sniffle was stunning.

It is so ingrained into the culture today that to go without it one is considered reckless or irresponsible.