> Globally, aren't Americans in general the most likely
> to be diagnosed with mental illness?
I always have a hard time explaining the bedrock craziness of the US to my non-American friends. It comes down to the Empire.
Most US public institutions are fatally corrupted by a century of murderous colonial land expansion, and another century of global Empire. In its better days, US capitalism did generate new and interesting forms of civil rights and participation, at the cost of a minimal welfare state and appalling neo-colonialism (Britain shows a similar pattern of civilized Imperial decorum, combined with underlying economic nastiness).
But those structures are deeply toxic. I didn't realize this until my latest quixotic adventure, in the public high schools. And realized, with a shock, just how many teachers and administrators were ex-soldiers, National Guard, etc. Half the kids in one middle school class had family members in the military. In a thousand ways, great and small, the system trains the kids to be centurions, not citizens.
-- DRR