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Posted

You may be interested in "The Medicalisation of Society" by Peter Conrad and "Madness and Civilisation" by Michel Foucault.

 

As for mental illness being real- there are measurable, physical abnormalities in the brains of mentally ill people. Mental illnesses are considered such as they cause the people that suffer from them a deficit in their ability to function in their daily lives. 

 

I think questions like this stem from the contemporary acknowledgement of the perverse history of the DSM but distracts from the fact that some people are genuinely suffering due to "invisible illnesses". 

Posted

You may be interested in "The Medicalisation of Society" by Peter Conrad and "Madness and Civilisation" by Michel Foucault.

 

As for mental illness being real- there are measurable, physical abnormalities in the brains of mentally ill people. Mental illnesses are considered such as they cause the people that suffer from them a deficit in their ability to function in their daily lives. 

 

I think questions like this stem from the contemporary acknowledgement of the perverse history of the DSM but distracts from the fact that some people are genuinely suffering due to "invisible illnesses". 

Thanks!

For those above, I meant that some don't believe in OCD (which I have) or ADHD. Perhaps, I misunderstood Molyneux's statement in his video.

Posted

You may be interested in "The Medicalisation of Society" by Peter Conrad and "Madness and Civilisation" by Michel Foucault.

 

As for mental illness being real- there are measurable, physical abnormalities in the brains of mentally ill people. Mental illnesses are considered such as they cause the people that suffer from them a deficit in their ability to function in their daily lives. 

 

I think questions like this stem from the contemporary acknowledgement of the perverse history of the DSM but distracts from the fact that some people are genuinely suffering due to "invisible illnesses". 

 

There is nothing in the DSM 5 that is empirically measurable, therefore, all mental illnesses do not exist. The closest thing we have to mental illness is the long term effect of pharmaceutical or recreational drugs on the brain.

Posted

There is nothing in the DSM 5 that is empirically measurable, therefore, all mental illnesses do not exist. The closest thing we have to mental illness is the long term effect of pharmaceutical or recreational drugs on the brain.

 

Perhaps I didn't make that post as clear as I could have. The DSM has a negative history and but it doesn't mean that many of the illnesses described in it are not real. Moreover, many of the illnesses in DSM-V are empirically founded so I have no idea what gives you that idea. This still isn't to say that I agree with much of the DSM but to say that the DSM is crap then follow up with mental illness isn't real doesn't make sense. You're simply strawmanning here it seems. 

 

Are you saying that some people don't suffer from patterns of thought/activity that cause them distress or impairment in the functioning of their normal daily lives? Have you never heard of social anxiety, irrational fears, PTSD, depression, schizophrenia etc?

  • 8 months later...
Posted

Last night waded into the murky waters of trying to define mental illness a priori. A fool's errand perhaps, but nevertheless we gave it the college try.

A few related, and just as difficult, questions we dipped into.

What is the opposite of mental illness?
What is consciousness?
How could we separate effects from causes?

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