Anxiety. Depression. Who hasn’t felt either or both at one point in their lives? But when we toss those words around carelessly, identities form. We become the words instead of feeling them, and the difference between the emotions we call depression or anxiety and the disorders themselves all but disappears. “Pathologizing normal distress” is just one of the many criticisms Sarah Fay levels at our current mental health system, most specifically at the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), the psychiatric bible to which mental health and other health professionals turn for patient labels and codes. Fay’s compelling, journalistic memoir “Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses” pulls back the curtain on current language and treatment practices.

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