Jennifer Wallace's New York Times bestseller, Never Enough: When Achievenment Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It, explores, in excruciating detail, the (literally) sickening stress that some Gen Z students are subject to in the rat race to get into a "good college."

She admits in the Introduction that her subject matter, the very high-achieving students from pressure-cooker high schools in the U.S., might be off-putting to some readers. It's assumed that this affluent population is doing just fine, but in reality, teenagers from this small slice of American society are suffering the same maladies previously found in only the poorest and most beleaguered in our society.

Wallace's book creates a space in the literature for us to consider how and why we're making this tiny subset of our population, who seem to have it all, as sick as those who have nothing. Why is this happening? The short answer is that for the cushiest of Americans, the most pressing needs are social in nature, not physiological.

It's helpful to invoke Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs here, the familiar pyramid with basic survival needs at the bottom and self-actualization at the top (with safety and security, love and belonging, and self-esteem ascendant stages in between). While we expect suffering in those who are struggling to get their basic needs met (food, clothing, shelter),........

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