Discusses the classification process for mental illness, examining the difficulty that practioners have of separating normal reactions to everyday stresses from true mental disorders, which involve recurring patterns of symptoms and behaviors.

An epidemic of madness? -- Are we pathologizing everyday life? -- Can evolutionary psychology make sense of mental disorder? -- Psychopathology as adaptation? -- Does society create (some) mental disorders? -- Is it in our genes? -- Do mental disorders differ by kind or degree? -- So what is mental illness anyway?.