I can sympathize with the author. I think they are probably correct in the general, that this tendency to try to treat normal psychological responses as somethi

I can sympathize with the author. I think they are probably correct in the general, that this tendency to try to treat normal psychological responses as something fixable with pharmaceuticals is a problem. That said I have some very real anecdotes related to emotional responses to things. These are things I've noticed that very much link short term emotional effects to physiological effects in the brain. The first, is a tool I learned from someone living with a type1 diabetic. He noticed that occasionally they'd end up in weirdly emotional antagonistic discussions with his partner, and eventually linked it to when his partner had low blood sugar. So, they established, that whenever conversations turn irrational, they pause and do a blood sugar check. Usually addressing this underlying problem made their conversation much more productive (and certainly just taking a break helped too). Similarly with my wife, we've established rules that allow one of us to pause the conversation to make sure the other is dealing with some underlying physical issue, usually one or both of us are tired or hungry when we start fighting. Tired and hungry both have profound effects on brain chemistry, so addressing them can have very real psychological effects. My other anecdote is related to a correlation I've found with mental health and taking a vitamin D supplement. It's not entirely clear to me whether taking vitamin D prevents my tendency towards mild depression, or if I'm tending towards depression so I stop taking vitamin D. But I know that if I keep taking it on a daily basis, my mood tends to be more stable. If I were to replace it with a sugar pill it may have similar effects, but given I live in Seattle where many tend to be deficient, I'd probably start to notice in a couple weeks.