This talk offers two kinds of history. On one level, it is a material history of mental healthcare—mostly in the United States, mostly in the last century or so. On another level, it offers a patient history of generalized anxiety disorder and its treatment in the last decade. Braiding these two histories together, the talk is structured around a series of case studies that link each of our current evidence-backed options for addressing anxiety and depression to longer histories of paths not taken (or, regrettably, taken) in the history of mental healthcare. In the end, the talk argues that only a material approach to both the disciplinary and personal histories of mental health can make sense of why we treat anxiety and other disorders the way we do—and how we might treat them otherwise.