Medical myths are dangerous because they often give patients a false sense of hope and a distorted view of their illness' cause, and can cause a delay in care and impair treatment.

In a nutshell, according to Maté diseases are caused by the stress of unresolved childhood trauma. This narrative is elaborated upon through long-winded and superfluous medical anecdotes which contain mountains of falsehoods and medical myths. Any science cited is cherry-picked at best. But the most preposterous (and dangerous) of them all is a reprint of a claim by one of his colleagues, a new-age self-help guru Dr. Christiane Northrup. According to his citation, Northrup says that she had witnessed firsthand a patient become cured of end stage ALS. How? The patient simply took the time for "self love and personal inventory".

Also read Hans Selye, acknowledged as the "Father" of the field of stress research:

https://twinsburglibrary.bibliocommons.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&t=author&search_category=author&q=selye+hans&commit=Search

A compassionate doctor's examination of the relationships between stress and psychological and physical illnesses. In our highly pathologized culture which has a pill for every complaint, this is a wonderfully wise book on the relationship between stress and an array of diseases as well as the effects of stress on the developing fetus. Gabor Mate's talks on You Tube are compliments to the book's topics.

If I could give this six stars, I would. A must-read.

Fascinating book, pretty heavy emotionally so be prepared to read it, because basically it says that we are even more *!@#-up than we know, and it's time to make some fundamental changes.
He assigns much of the blame to Western civilization, and if you doubt it, he provides some compelling evidence.
One criticism I might make is that I wonder if environmental toxins play more of a role in emotional stress and disease, it would have been nice if the author addressed that topic. Whether you agree or not, very interesting to read and well-explained.