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The Myth of Normal

Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

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#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“This riveting and beautifully written tale has profound implications for all of our lives, including the practice of medicine and mental health.” —Bessel van der Kolk, MD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps the Score
“Wise, sophisticated, rigorous and creative: an intellectual and compassionate investigation of who we are and who we may become. Essential reading for anyone with a past and a future.” —Tara Westover, New York Times bestselling author of Educated
The Myth of Normal is a book literally everyone will be enriched by—a wise, profound and healing work that is the culmination of Dr. Maté's many years of deep and painfully accumulated wisdom.” —Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Stolen Focus
“Gabor and Daniel Maté have delivered a book in which readers can seek refuge and solace during moments of profound personal and social crisis. The Myth of Normal is an essential compass during disorienting times.” —Esther Perel, psychotherapist, author, and host of Where Should We Begin
From our most trusted and compassionate authority on stress, trauma, and mental well-being—a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

Gabor Maté’s internationally bestselling books have changed the way we look at addiction and have been integral in shifting the conversations around ADHD, stress, disease, embodied trauma, and parenting. Now, in this revolutionary book, he eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their health care systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?
    For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. In The Myth of Normal, co-written with his son Daniel, Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society, and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. The result is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 4, 2022
      Physician Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts) delivers a sweeping analysis of the relationship between illness, trauma, and capitalism. “Our social and economic culture generates chronic stressors that undermine well-being,” contends Maté, suggesting that medical treatment should better attend to the mind-body connection and the impact of one’s environment on one’s health. Though Maté tells of surviving hunger and disease as an infant in Hungary during WWII, he mostly focuses on the traumas of day-to-day life, including how pregnant mothers’ stress about employment or healthcare may lead to behavioral problems in their children, and how the effects of racism and poverty lead to lower life expectancies. The author details the role that emotions might play in somatic illness, citing studies that found, among patients admitted for biopsy, those with suppressed anger were more likely to have malignant tumors. Maté brings compassion to his examination of societal failures and elucidates how addiction is often an attempt to quell the pain of having been abused. Maté marshals an impressive amount of research to outline an original and persuasive vision of health focused on environmental influences and the interplay between the mind and body, though the extensive studies mentioned sometimes verge on redundancy. Nevertheless, this bold reappraisal has the power to change how readers think about health.

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  • English

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