[ip26]

Maybe we just need to reframe it a bit. If you have strep and you don't get help & take care of it, that's a moral failure (you'll get other people sick). If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.

[zepto]

It would be nice if that analogy worked, but there is no psychological equivalent of antibiotics and although psychological and psychiatric treatments can be helpful, they often aren’t, and equally people actually do frequently recover from mental health issues without treatment.

[yesenadam]

Well, with at least some mental illnesses, e.g. hearing voices, the illness in part is that you think the voices are real. It doesn't occur to you that you might need the help of a psychiatrist. The whole thing develops out of trying to make sense of what you assume are real voices. Which is impossible, and drives you nuts making the attempt. [That happened to me, for a couple of years.]

[jhayward]

> If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.

No. Mental illness directly impinges on the executive functions of the brain, which are what one uses to discern reality, weigh options, make plans, and motivate action.

You are simply calling mental illness a moral failure.