If you got here by clicking a link that I can’t find to “What is mental illness?”: Sometimes I only see how I can improve a post after it has been published. It happened now, so I’m deleting until I can rewrite it. I apologize for the inconvenience. In the meantime, here’s an article by Eric Maisel:
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Defining Mental Disorders Doesn’t Make Them Exist
It begins like this:
No one really doubts the phenomena of birds and bees. But to call birds and bees miracles and to create a miracle-maker God who created them is a certain kind of fraudulent leap. No one really doubts the phenomena of sadness and worry. But to call them symptoms of mental disorders is exactly the same kind of fraudulent leap. We make Gods and mental disorders in exactly the same fraudulent way, by illegitimately using real phenomena as “proof” of the existence of non-existing things.
BEYOND THE PALE 