Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist?

[napoleon_in_rags]

152. But you see, you actually get at the very CORE of the problem with the status quo.

I saw your post and the one below earlier, and had some time to think about them. Your big message is that people don't want to be labelled. I absolutely understand that, and I agree. But the issue actually is with the current system of labels. They are too static, they do not allow for dynamic change within the individual. Whereas the paradigm we treat mentally healthy people with not only expects behavioural changes, it requires them.

Consider some guy in any social group, who gets upset, and starts accusing certain people there of being part of a cabal of witches. There are two social mindsets people can respond to him with:
1) The first is to treat him as mentally healthy peer - so people would call him a religious zealot asshole who has no right to be making these weird false allegation against others, he would be scorned.
2) The second is to label him mentally ill, he would be looked at with some sympathy, but as an "other".

The scorning in approach number one is an attempt to modify the guys behaviour so he doesn't act that way. Approach number 2 has abandoned that. Its no longer about the changing "him", of the guy, but the unchanging "it" of his disease, which is also his label.

The whole problem and the paradox is right there. Approach two recognizes the guys perceptions are beyond his control, and gives some compassion. But only approach one sees him as a peer, an equal, yet the confrontation and scorn doesn't help the situation a bit.

What's needed is a real idea about a path to recovery, a real recognition about the ability of people to heal, to go from one state to another, to go from other to peer. We need to find a way to heal that divide between people struggling with mental issues and every one else.