In 1957, UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan observed that Britons “…had never had it so good.”

At a material level, those comments are even more true today, and yet as we learn in this speech from the renowned psychologist, physician and author Gabor Maté, the truth is that all the glitter and gadgetry of modern prosperity is hiding a darker reality of widespread despair and disease.

While he refers to the US specifically in his presentation, Gabor’s criticism that our highly materialistic and individualistic culture is literally making us sick applies just about as much anywhere in the Western world.

At a time when most of us have never had it so good, 50% of US adults suffer from a chronic disease while 50% of adolescents meet the clinic criteria of mental illness.

The studies from Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities confirm in science what people have always instinctively understood, forever, that our feelings are intimately connected with our overall health and that any emotional distress that we feel will become manifest as disease in our bodies.

That is so strong, so innate within us, it can begin while we’re still in the womb. Gabor is well known for his belief that stress experienced by mothers is ingested by their babies just as much as all the nutrients that allow them to grow.

The causes of our stress epidemic are easy to identify – a lack of control over our lives, a lack of nurturing for people who are struggling emotionally and financially, a lack of information for people left behind where more and more of what we need to know is available only on our computers and our phones.

The remedy is much, much harder but it begins with a recognition that no person is an island, and that our connections with one another is our most valuable possession.