I have heard both arguments in my Psych 12 class, and I favor the side that states "Mental Illness is not a disease"
Excerpt from USA Today Magazine July 2000:
Of course, a mental illness is not a disease in the pathologocial sense.
A disease is a bodily abnormality, a lesion of cells, tissues, or orgnas. The term in relation to mental illness is used purely in a metaphorical sense.
The brain is a material object, but the mind is not. The mind is an idea, and therefore cannot be diseased.
If we believe a mental illness is a disease it is on par with bodily diseases such as Cancer.
A mental illness is a pattern of personal conduct unwanted by self or others. Basically, it is abnormal behabior in a person rather than in their body.
A medical disase is discovered and then given a name, such as AIDS.
A mental disease is invented and then given a name, such as ADD.
It is not possible to die of a mental illness or to find evidence of it in organs, tissues, cells, or body fluid during an autopsy. Anthrax is a disease that is biological, cand and does, kill it's host. ADD on the other hand is socially constructed and connot kill.
No one sees a "crush" as a disease, and yes it it the same as a mental illness.
Psychiatrists have succeeded in persuading media, courts, and the scientific community, that mental disorders are diseases. But there is no empirical evidence to support this, in fact, there CAN'T be any.
Let's use this example:
John Smith has astrocytoma, it is discovered and empirically verified. Radiologists identify it and observe the lesion. Pathologists confirm by examining tissues.
John Smith is diagnosed with Schizophrenia. The psychiatrists identifies his behavior as schizo, other psychiatrists confirm it's prescence by committing him to a mental hospital where he gets his right to refuse treatment. He exercises this right. Then a judge tells him he is mentally incompetent to refuse treatment.
Psychiatrists have power over people denominated as "atients," their statems act as covert prescriptions. Psychiatrists would describe a man who says "God is telling him to kill his wife" as schizophrenic. This diagnosis is a prescription to hospitalize the patient against their will, or after he has killed his wife, to acquit him as not guilt by reason of insanity and hospitalize him against his will.
A patient who has a bodily illness may or may not be hospitalized based on his own decisions. Mental illness allows a judge to incarcerate a sex criminal who has completed his prison sentence.
Psychiatry is a vialation of legal-political principle. One that is odious because most persons trated against their will by psychiatrists are defined as legally competent-they can vote, marry, divorce, etc.
In a free society the physician's "right" to treat is not based on diagnosis but on the patient's willingness to be treated.
A mental patient is entitled to liberty unless they ahve committed a crime. Otherwise they should not be forcibly treated.
In a free society a psychiatrist should not be allowed to profit from his diagnosis and treatment of "atients"
That was a bit long, but it is a correct summary of the idea.
Is it right for psychiatrists to profit from their jobs? Considering they may forcibly treat patients who have not committed crimes, allowing them to preserve a job that they may not otherwise have?
Have psychiatrists tricked society into believe that mental illness is a horrible disease?
In one movement mental illness removes motivation from action, attatches it to illness and destroys the possibility of seperating disease from non-disease.
Last I checked chemical imbalances were a disease, but okey.
Depression is caused by lack of dopamine for usually a physiological problem. While PTSD is a mental disorder that causes serious physical problems for the affected, such as seizures, violent outbreaks, and even heart attacks.
It seems as though the common conception is that the brain is the tangible...well...brain. The mind is the metaphorical. The consciousness?
Yes that would make sense. The brain is made up of the two hemispheres, the creative and the more intellectual side, while the mind is made up of the subconscious and the conscious in a way.
And it seems (by reading Wiki) that it's more of a form of sick, demented pleasure. Creepy.
All I know is that thing with the long name I am not typing out twice that I said earlier says it is a mental illness. And that is basically the guideline for diagnosis of mental illness in North America.
I've always wondered how exactly our brain works. How do we think? How do we feel? Hell, how do we even come up with ideas? We are, after all, nothing but flesh, blood, and nerves. So how do we function the way we do?
It's all our brain interpreting information in it's own way.
And that is the only answer we have. We know little else, and that is why it is difficult to say that someone thinking abnormally has a disease...
