Spillane says “Brain illnesses are discovered, mental illnesses are invented.”

As Dr_Tad noted, this is a false separation and does not deal with the issue of the social construction of mental illness. Mental illnesses are not just ‘invented’; they are also discovered. This is usually when there is a mismatch between the functioning of the individual and the requirements of the society in which the individual lives.

In other societies and in earlier times in western societies, it seems likely that people with non-typical brain functioning were looked after by the family, work requirements were less onerous and the rules of social behaviour were more clearly defined so that it wasn’t the problem that is now.

Diagnosis of mental illness, despite all the valid criticisms of the psychiatric ‘industry’ and the DSM, is not made lightly or for social convenience, but is a response to distress - either of the sufferer or those who care for them.

The final paragraph is great though! I’d really like something that would “disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations”.

This argument is based on a false dichotomy. If a person is "mentally ill" it matters not whether it is their brain or their mind which is diseased. The pain and the anguish and the disorientation and the trauma are the same.
Are you really arguing that those of us who are dealing with a mental illness are fooling ourselves and that all we need is to have a good hard look at ourselves?
Perhaps you might like to go a round or two with my feelings of depression which, thankfully, can be controlled using medication.

feelings of depression.
shal,
again this depends on your definition of depression. I suffer badly from fatigue & that's depressing yet none of the Doctors I consult will give me a few days off just to rest. They just look at me as if I were nuts.

good information here, but like to respond from the 'other side'...not the empowered doctor/Councillor/Psychologist but 'sufferer'...whom commonly told me that people's response to them range from condescending to obnoxious...in the same vein this response so apology to those offended by post...

Peter...how about putting some real effort into the material before pen to paper...if so you would know schizophrenics are happy people...yes...the people in their 'false'world they create are full of engaging personalities they form strong bonds with, that they cant find in the 'real' world...and manicdepressive...a strong persistent feeling, negative or positive, first forms without real world reason, then they put an action to it...so the depressive or manic stage...while the 'real' world wants to control/suppress/prevent natural responsive emotions in one way or another so causing stress...

and to the rest of you 'normal'...did you know goldstandard to mental health is 'being completely aware of the situation you are in and brains processing it and responding without overpowering this awareness'...yeah, this the biggest factor that determined which of our forefathers survived in the jungle to evolve to you...now look at the lot of you...creating your own comfortable world, and filtering out anything else that doesnt fit...so who here still believe Iraq wasnt about oil...or global warming...true democracy exists in 'democratic' countries...so you must be nuts too for believing the false reality of the media...just when we stop looking after ourselves, so get noticed...you dont...

and 'But can minds be ill? I argue that they cannot'...mate...'brain is cells communicating with neurotransmitters' which gives you the 'mind'...so normal distribution of activity statically will give you normal range...and those out of this have an abnormal state...of course 'mind' is a functional state of an organ...organ which can be 'ill'...

what we should be focusing on is how to train 'ill' to become aware of their brain activity and bring it under their control...refer to 'goldstandard' above and once there and confident to keep it stable...then dabbling with their favoured 'ill state' is fine...this ability gets screwed up by pharmaceutics...did you know that...so creates a more vulnerable person, and rich drug companies...

sam

Myth 1: Mental process is brain process. This has never been proven, and actually (due to quantisation) logically entails that the Real numbers are countable (though I am not going to attempt to write the proof of that statement here: just consider the continuity of experience and consider the amount of information and see if it is compatible with the assumption that it is countable.)

Myth 2: Brain process problems can be diagnosed by anybody other than the person whose brain it is. The brain is way to complex for that. You can guess, and selectively ignore evidence to the contrary, using clever statistical arguments to hide uncertainties, but nothing that has been deduced from brain observations has been done so with serious logical rigour (not on the scale of mathematics anyhow).

Myth 3: Psychiatrists are trained in the necessary areas of science and philosophy to actually know what they are doing and to do their job reliably. They are trained, alas, in medicine and that is the wrong area for a great number of reasons. Space and time prohibit me from going into details here, and in any case, a web forum is not the place for detailed arguments.

This is a very interesting article, and I'm sure has wide applicability to the experiences of very many people. During one of the periodic fights with the CSA that were a feature of the first 6 or 7 years post-divorce I sought help from a GP for a severe reactive depression that was quite debilitating. As those who know me can attest, the sort of negative ideation that was colouring my thinking is quite foreign to me. I'm very much solution-oriented normally. Anyway, the doctor's only response was to prescribe me a drug called citalopram, which is an SSRI and which is known to take several months to stabilise the patients neurochemistry. It's quite a strong drug, approved for the treatment of major depression.

However, after having the prescription filled, I did some research on the stuff and decided not to take it. It sat in my desk drawer for the next couple of years while I worked at beating the depression through a cognitive behavioural approach. It worked, or perhaps the depression lifted once the proximal cause was removed.

The point is, I think, that I was not "mentally ill", I was suffering a normal response to a great deal of stress that was being imposed by a Government Agency that was not acting in a properly responsible way. There is nothing unexpected in being depressed after having all your money taken from the bank on an Easter Thursday, with no food in the fridge or money to buy more. It's an entirely normal response to being placed in an intolerable situation over an extended period. One runs out of the inner resources to maintain equilibrium.

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