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by p_j_w 796 days ago
> Mental illness could also be defined by a person's ability to function in their community and social constructs.

Are you suggesting rebelliousness and non-conformity should be considered mental illnesses, defects to be cured?

3 comments

That's not what that page says ODD is.
The page does say it, I'll agree with that. But I think that the classification as of the disorder basically is a method of classifying people who generally have real life experience with life going wrong, they have reason for behavior which doesn't make it a disorder but instead self preservation.

They are classifying the symptom, not the cause. "Treating" it is fixing their environment and not the person. Too bad drugging the individual is the cheapest solution to create compliant individuals who won't take action.

it does, just your ODD keeps you from realizing that :)
You cherry picked one sentence and stripped away the entire context and meaning of my post.
Because I take issue with that sentence.
In a way, yes. That's why repressive governments here in Eastern Europe had started using psychology as a tool/weapon in order to institutionalise dissidents, because it was seen as a mental illness not to be on the same page as the predominant ideology back then.

I think a similar thing is starting happening in the West, even though (fortunately) not at the same scale just yet, meaning people who are seen as being against the system are already categorised by the powers that be as "deplorables" (to quote a recent US presidential candidate), i.e. one step way from those having a mental illness.

Later edit:

Something like this [1]

> Ken Stern, a former CEO of National Public Radio, in his new book Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right, explains that most of the media has been feeding America a negatively skewed view of Trump along with negative characterizations of the "deplorables," the people who hold more conservative viewpoints. Insistence that Trump is "mentally ill" can be regarded as part of this contemptuous discrediting of others whose beliefs differ from theirs.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-confl...