Everywhere we look, people are unwell. Nearly ¼ of US adults live with a diagnosed mental illness, and over ¾ of adults have at least one chronic health condition. More than ½ have multiple chronic conditions.
This is most of the adult population. The epidemic of mental and chronic illness isn’t a sign of individual weakness, but the biology of a society that has become unlivable.
From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, each of us is a living system of relationships. Our bodies, brains, emotions, and sense of meaning depend on the same thing: regulation through connection, safety, and belonging. When those needs are met, the body organizes around health. When they’re not, the system becomes overloaded and cannot function well.
Chronic conditions are the body’s long-term response to overload. Mental health struggles are another expression of the same thing. Pain, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, brain fog, and isolation are signals of systems pushed beyond capacity. The organism adapts the best it can. The “healthcare system” or disease management industry labels these as disorders, but they are predictable consequences of a system that’s been forced to live in survival mode for too long.
So if most of the population is sick or struggling, the diagnosis belongs to the culture. The suffering is data. The body is the evidence. These conditions are the physiology of a social environment that chronically undermines and violates human needs.
As social primates, we evolved for cooperation, reciprocity, touch, meaning, and mutual care. Instead, we live in a culture that rewards extraction, domination, and self-interest. We are lonely in a world that pretends connection can be bought. We are unsafe in systems that call themselves care. We are expected to adapt to injustice and call it resilience. This is not sustainable for any nervous system, body, or community.
Our biology is honest. It’s showing us, in rising cortisol levels, autoimmune flares, inflammation, despair, and fatigue, that the way we live is incompatible with what we are. When life becomes a constant negotiation for safety, the body burns out trying to keep up.
We don’t suffer because we’re broken. We suffer because our core biological needs for safety, belonging, fairness, rest, meaning, and mutual support are unmet. Worse, those needs are denied, monetized, and weaponized. The market sells us comfort while creating the distress from which it profits. Institutions that should protect exploit instead. Healing itself has been commodified.
But the same biology that shows us our suffering also shows us the way back. We don’t need to fix our nature; we need to honor it. We can begin by restoring what was stolen from us: connection, honesty, community, justice, and compassion. When we meet each other’s needs for safety and belonging, regulation begins. The body settles. The mind clears. The cells respond.
The societal is the cellular. Every act of care ripples through tissue. Every injustice leaves a biochemical trace. Health is not a personal project, but a collective one. When we create humane conditions, the body remembers what it’s designed to do. It heals and experiences the joy of well-being.
