[kkielhofner]

One of the wisest things I ever heard from a mental health professional:

"There's a normal range of asshole, beyond that, it's mental illness"

There is an entire range of diagnosable mental illnesses, below that there are entire clusters of personality disorders that don't quite raise to the diagnosis of the others.

When it comes to personality disorders, especially, the current consensus of the psychiatric community (for better or worse) is that they're made and formed in childhood. Essentially, many of these people are acting out things that were done to them; quite possibly through no fault of their own in their early development.

Of course the results of their unacceptable behavior is what it is but there is some credence to the theory that these people are suffering in their own right. We're miserable just digesting their thoughts one tweet at a time. Meanwhile they walk around with that all day everyday.

[watwut]

When you are on receiving side of the "assholeness beyond normal range", it is significantly destructive.

It does actual real world significant damage to actual real world people who then suffer a lot. If such person have real power, say over salaries and firings, the damage is financial and long term very very quick.

It is not just it is unacceptable in abstract way. It is that innocent people are made suffer.

[fastball]

Also worth pointing out that the diagnoses are just things we made up.

[steve_adams_86]

You’re getting downvoted but I think this actually is worth considering.

It doesn’t devalue diagnoses. These categories and labels are to some degree arbitrary, and the underlying conditions are often very elastic and amorphous.

The categories and labels are very helpful in some ways, but it’s unhelpful to rely on them exclusively to inform yourself if someone is having mental issues or not.

I’m not sure if this is what you were touching on or not.

[fastball]

That's what I was going for, was definitely not trying to say people don't have issues. It's helpful to try to treat conditions based on what has helped other people with similar symptoms in the past, but it's still just pattern matching, there is no hard scientific line we can point to and say "this person is bipolar".