AcutePsychosis.com

The Myth of Mental Illness

Someone is considered mentally "ill" if:

His conduct rigidly and consistently deviates from the typical, average behaviour of all other people in his culture and society that fit his profile (whether this conventional behaviour is moral or rational is immaterial).

Judgment and grasp of objective, physical reality is impaired.

Conduct is not a matter of choice but is innate and irresistible.

Behavior causes him or others discomfort, and is dysfunctional, self-defeating, and self-destructive even by his own yardsticks.

Descriptive criteria aside, what is the essence of mental disorders? Are they merely physiological disorders of the brain, or, more precisely of its chemistry? If so, can they be cured by restoring the balance of substances and secretions in that mysterious organ? And, once equilibrium is reinstated ñ is the illness "gone" or is it still lurking there, "under wraps", waiting to erupt? Are psychiatric problems inherited, rooted in faulty genes (though amplified by environmental factors) ñ or brought on by abusive or wrong nurturance? These questions are the domain of the "medical" school of mental health.

Others cling to the spiritual view of the human psyche. They believe that mental ailments amount to the metaphysical discomposure of an unknown medium ñ the soul. Theirs is a holistic approach, taking in the patient in his or her entirety, as well as his milieu. The members of the functional school regard mental health disorders as perturbations in the proper, statistically "normal", behaviours and manifestations of "healthy" individuals, or as dysfunctions. The "sick" individual ñ ill at ease with himself (ego-dystonic) or making others unhappy (deviant) ñ is "mended" when rendered functional again by the prevailing standards of his social and cultural frame of reference. In a way, the three schools are akin to the trio of blind men who render disparate descriptions of the very same elephant. Still, they share not only their subject matter ñ but, to a counter intuitively large degree, a faulty methodology.