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Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.125.11.1576

With the popularization of the psychotropic drugs, the author observes, a peculiar aberration has entered into public thinking: everyone nowadays expects to be happy. Pills have come to be regarded as a means to do away with the everyday anxieties and pain that have long served as spurs to human progress by leading to constructive action. This new view of unhappiness as a wholly negative and unnecessary emotion, the author suggests, is in need of reevaluation.

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