Is there such a thing as a mental illness?
No, there is no such thing as a mental illness. You can look up “dualism“ in Wikipedia, and it will show you the history of the weird, bizarre belief that the brain has visible and invisible areas in it. Historically, this belief was started by a mathematician, Rene Descartes, who said one area of the brain had an invisible part that allowed the brain to communicate with angels and other invisible beings. Pretty weird, huh? if that isn’t strange enough, he said he had the authority to declare that truth because he was a mathematician. Well, for sure that makes sense! That one area of the brain that he said was the center of our thoughts and emotions was the “pineal gland.” What does it really do? Now we know it is the area that releases the sleep inducing hormone “melatonin.” Sorry Mr. Descartes! You should have just stuck with inventing Cartesian Geometry!
“Mental illness” is a term meant to comfort people who “don’t” have emotional illnesses and don’t want to think about it. “Mental illness” implies that there’s something wrong in that person’s character, so they are either possessed by demons or defective in some profound way that they were born with, or they are just scary. Bad people. In any case someone to be avoided. Terms like this should be dumped in the trash bin of history, along with other “put down terms“ used for people of minorities or people who are disadvantaged by birth defects or other issues out of their control.
(Here I get on a soap box…)
Where is society who believes in social justice? This term does not promote social justice, in fact it promotes a negative attitude towards those with the emotional illnesses. Insurance companies and medical professionals (gasp) like it for unknown reasons. Insurance companies may like it because then they can limit how many times those people see a therapist or doctor “for a mental health issue.”. Or then they just don’t have to think about the issue of losing control over how you mind behaves. For that reason “behavioral health” is a more reasonable lable for mood and anxiety issues. The more professionals use the term “mental health” the more it makes it seem legitimate for people to label those with behavioral health issues–and stigmatize them. Years ago, there was even a whole different billing code system in the medical establishment for psychiatrists and their patients. This allowed psychiatrists to be regarded (in some people’s minds) as “second-class doctors“ and psychiatric patients to be regarded as “second class patients.“ Historically, hospitals often built psychiatric hospitals separate from the main hospitals so they didn’t have to deal with those doctors or those patients–as much. This practice is continued today. Kind of interesting how some things don’t change or change very little.