| > but I don't like confusing people by trying to deny the common understanding of a word. I think that's actually the crux of the argument. The phrase "mental illness" IS the perversion of a common understanding of a word. When people hear "illness" they think "thing that is broken". Is a runny nose an illness? No, the flu is an illness. I don't think it's about whether we fully understand the cause or not; I think it's about whether or not we think there probably is a single, physical cause. So we absolutely should call Cystic Fibrosis an illness even if we don't know the cause, because we think there probably IS one. And heck, there may be two causes! And then... well, then it would be TWO illnesses with similar symptoms, not one. At this point I'm straying from the book because I don't remember it too well, so this is editorializing: I don't think that holds for many mental illnesses. "Depression"--do we think there's one, or few, underlying physical causes of it? Highly doubtful. And we know it's highly doubtful because the treatments that make the symptoms go away are so varied in their mechanisms of action and effectiveness. Exercise. Sunlight. Changing jobs. Medication. Time. Talk therapy. All these things "work", to some degree or another, but the odds that they are targeting the same underlying, malfunctioning, physical mechanism are very slim. So one would say "depression is not an illness, the same way a runny nose is not an illness. It's a pattern." |
Would that be a correct interpretation of your thoughts?