This is perhaps most concerning for children. About 12 percent of children in America now carry a diagnosis of A.D.H.D, and there was a 40-fold increase in childhood bipolar disorder diagnoses between 1994 and 2003. Five times as many children are now prescribed psychostimulant and antipsychotic medications as were in the 1980s. Today, a quarter of children and teenagers take prescription drugs regularly, and seven percent of older adolescents and young adults report abusing opioids — most of whom were initially prescribed them by a doctor.

With millions of Americans taking risky medications for questionable diagnoses, have we medicalized everyday life?

There’s no shortage of factors that have gotten us here. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, has taken an active, sometimes dubious, role in defining and promoting new diagnoses, through direct-to-consumer advertising and physician outreach efforts.

Often overlooked, however, are how the psychologies of doctors and patients contribute. Clinical encounters that don’t end with a definitive diagnosis — a clear acknowledgment of the enemy — are inherently unsatisfying. Doctors, through their training and mandate, are motivated to package a constellation of symptoms into something that can be understood, named and treated.

At the same time, we have both a growing arsenal of medications to fix patients’ problems and a steadily shrinking number of minutes in which to do so. Not surprisingly, the path of least resistance becomes labeling and prescribing instead of exploring and managing.

Patients are motivated by the understandable desire to name and ease their suffering — and today, many more patients have that opportunity. But it also means that much of normal human experience is treated with prescriptions instead of patience. This is perhaps not surprising. We increasingly have easy solutions at our fingertips: Dial-up modems have given way to broadband; stores are being replaced by Amazon drones; courtship is now Tinder. Is it wrong for patients to expect quick fixes from medicine?

An important step forward may be putting more emphasis on nonprescription remedies. For many medicalized conditions, lifestyle changes are often just as effective as medications, if not more so (and don’t come with side effects).