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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

What I noticed in US is that people are very touchy about being uncomfortable. Doctors are supposed to "fix" problems and make things "comfortable". This usually means "give me antibiotics to kill this infections as fast as possible" and "give me more pain pills, I don't want to feel any slight discomfort". If doctor tells them to drink some hot tea and lay in bed instead they might just switch doctors who will give them antibiotics. Or say a doctor decides that well you can get opiates for your pain but you might become dependent so take some aspirin and tough it out -- that won't work with many.

I know I am painting with a broad brush and with a sample of 30 or so acquaintances from both sides of the "pond" here, but it was my impression so far.

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Yeah, that's a pretty broad brush. I don't even like to take Aspirin or Ibuprofen unless I have to, and I'm not the only one like that.

Also, I've noticed that some of my fellow Generation Y'ers have arrived at similar opinions by observing the issues that come with the over-medication of their parents/grand parents into old age. Doctors love to prescribe stuff, and sometimes the interactions between drugs is so bad that it can be pretty scary. Observing this as a third party can be enough to make you wary about over-using medication. It's also expensive and our health insurance situation over here is awful.

tl;dr, Yes, that's a huge generalization. I think a lot of younger Americans are starting to bend back the other way towards only medicating when necessary after seeing how much a can of worms it can be when used as a crutch.

When you watch people lose jobs for sick time you tend to have that reaction.

Alas it is an affliction that is spreading around the world. More and more people I meet are unwilling to tolerate any 'downtime' for minor illnesses like colds.

It's ironic this attitude comes from the same country that tells you to "man up and walk it off" for just about anything.

"Man up and walk it off" is not uniformly distributed around the country. I give good odds that the rdstc is not from one of those areas.

As usual, accusing huge groups of hypocrisy is not well-founded unless you can establish that the hypocritical attitudes really are held by the same people.

"man up and walk it off" is what we tell others

I think this is probably more of a TV/movie thing than much based in reality. We're no tougher than anyone else, but I could see how you may think we see ourselves as such if you just watch our movies/shows.

You'd think that's true, but then again, look at how badly veterans are treated, especially those with deep psychological problems like PTSD.

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