A related-ish thing I remember reading about is how doctors would ask folks complaining about back pain what career they were in. The goal is that folks who com

A related-ish thing I remember reading about is how doctors would ask folks complaining about back pain what career they were in. The goal is that folks who complain about back pain who are unemployed due to the local mill closing would get shunted into disability, while knowledge workers wouldn't. So there's likely a pretty big effect of society telling folks that they have to be "disabled" in order for us to support them, and one way to be "disabled" is to have debilitating pain, and so you wind up with a bunch of folks who can't work and have a pain pill prescription.