by Matt Haig
First published 2018
Matt Haig builds on his previous memoir about mental health to examine how contemporary life actively damages our psychological wellbeing. He argues that modern societies create conditions that make minds sick and engineer unhappiness through their very structure. Drawing from his personal experience with panic disorder, anxiety, and depression, Haig investigates how external forces shape mental health in both harmful and beneficial ways. He analyzes broad cultural forces like inequality, social media platforms, and news consumption patterns. He also examines intimate aspects of daily existence including sleep habits, exercise routines, and the artificial separation people create between mind and body. The book presents his collected observations about how social, commercial, and technological changes that society labels as progress actually obstruct human happiness and psychological health. Haig offers readers a framework for understanding the environmental factors that contribute to mental illness and provides insights for navigating a world that seems designed to create psychological distress.
Genres: psychology, self-help, social-issues, memoir, non-fiction, current-affairs
Vibes: accessible, contemplative, critical, introspective, thought-provoking, urgent
Tropes: cultural-critique, personal-narrative, self-examination, systemic-analysis
Period: 21st century
288 pages · Paperback · Penguin Life
Content warnings: anxiety, depression, mental-illness