Defining Mental Illness

Simple question. What is mental illness?

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A lot of different things get labeled mental illness. The label bothers me more in some cases/patterns than in others. It's a philosophically lame category.

Kovacs wrote:

A lot of different things get labeled mental illness. The label bothers me more in some cases/patterns than in others. It's a philosophically lame category.

What's mental illness? Is it deviation from the norm?

What exactly is normal?

[quote="TheJoker"]

Kovacs wrote:

A lot of different things get labeled mental illness. The label bothers me more in some cases/patterns than in others. It's a philosophically lame category.

Quote :

What's mental illness?

It's not a term I would use to describe another person's problems or patterns. So I don't want to any answer to be take as some support for it on my part. The DSM4 includes what I see as a whole bunch or not necessarily related patterns. It is convenient for psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry to consider these all brain chemistry problems and also for them not to look at what the norm is out there and see if it is problematic.

Quote :

Is it deviation from the norm?

My paraphrase of their thinking would be deviations from the norm that cause personal, interpersonal and professional problems of a serious nature. And yes, that is vague. And yes, that assumes that if you have problems with norms, you have a problem, which is a fairly fascist assumption.

Quote :

What exactly is normal?

Fitting in with the bulks of the masses.

[quote="Kovacs"]

TheJoker wrote:

Kovacs wrote:

A lot of different things get labeled mental illness. The label bothers me more in some cases/patterns than in others. It's a philosophically lame category.

Quote :

What's mental illness?

It's not a term I would use to describe another person's problems or patterns. So I don't want to any answer to be take as some support for it on my part. The DSM4 includes what I see as a whole bunch or not necessarily related patterns. It is convenient for psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry to consider these all brain chemistry problems and also for them not to look at what the norm is out there and see if it is problematic.

Quote :

Is it deviation from the norm?

My paraphrase of their thinking would be deviations from the norm that cause personal, interpersonal and professional problems of a serious nature. And yes, that is vague. And yes, that assumes that if you have problems with norms, you have a problem, which is a fairly fascist assumption.

Quote :

What exactly is normal?

Fitting in with the bulks of the masses.

Your preaching to the choir here Kovacs because just about everything you have said I have to agree with.

Welcome to the crazy club!

TheJoker wrote:

Your preaching to the choir here Kovacs because just about everything you have said I have to agree with.

Welcome to the crazy club!

So it would seem to me one should be spontaneously cautious around psychiatrists and police.

Kovacs wrote:

TheJoker wrote:

Your preaching to the choir here Kovacs because just about everything you have said I have to agree with.

Welcome to the crazy club!

So it would seem to me one should be spontaneously cautious around psychiatrists and police.

Just think of both as specific kinds of mercenaries in their field for the government mobsters and gangsters.

After all, what is a government beyond a gang of conspiring people looking to control and exploit everybody else?

A site which has some useful articles for those diagnosed mentally ill or suspect they themselves are. Indeed, I've suspected it of myself and my family has the same history but "clinically confirmed."
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The writings reek of Christian thought about love and "righteousness," however you can safely ignore that and get to the content which places responsibility for mental illness upon the self. While the idea applied to certain disorders like Autism may seem far-fetched, for others the idea that illnesses are actually selfish reactions to pains within your past is not. The key point in all of it is that responsibility for your actions lie with you, above those who hurt you or caused you pain and that it is only you who can stop reacting selfishly by changing your intentions and redirecting your will.

I just love the smell of burning fat, just love it.
I wish they made candles that smell like searing pork cheeks.

ahem.. my mind wanders..

The lines are a bit fuzzy in between these outside-of-normal-range drives which are organically caused (originate within), and those which are environmentally caused (outside factors affecting what is within).
As an individual progresses through his developmental stages, he becomes continually less susceptible to outside influence. Very early in development, the individual is very vulnerable to stimuli, and is able to absorb its influence into his organic construct.
The further into development an individual is, the stronger the stimuli needs to be in order to produce an effect.
The speed of development is highly variable and it is dependent on the organic construct.
With that in mind, you can deduce that based on the strength of the organic construct, there is a lot an individual can do to shut out environmental influence which is disruptive.
If the "problem" is organic, though, not much you can do, other than to learn to imitate normal behavior.

Postread Warning: The whole following message of mine reeks of shallowness. It could best be summed up as me reconciling the website I linked with previous intuitions into human nature.

That vulnerability is a double-edged sword. Without it, a child would not learn and imitate adequately enough from their parents or caregivers to survive. With it, they're open to "negative" influence and attack. Their slate is not clean to begin with, being a mixed bag of altruistic and selfish behaviors (as the website puts so binary 1/0, Xt. like. Of course the altruistic behaviors are selfishly motivated as well.) There is, of course, a primal aspect to that decision: those who look and behave more similar to ourselves, assuming all else equal among others, we'd choose to associate with and "give" more to. Someone is likely ill if, subconsciously, they make irrational decisions.

What's rational (in a general circumstance and logical sense) is to give or be friendly first with strangers. See [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. This is assuming a lack of knowledge of their previous behavior. One such example where this behavior doesn't work is in war. You're going to stereotype someone dressed as the enemy as being that enemy and respond with hostile contact first. When someone consistently behaves hurtfully or irrationally toward people who are actually trying to help them or people whom they have little provocation or reason to be hostile toward, they become open to the categorization of being mentally ill. The difference between illness and disability is that there are episodes of illness whereas a disability has a behavior happening constantly, has a physical reason underlying it and is (for current medical capability) unending and untreatable.