I will try to answer you authentically. Your belief is not necessarily a problem. Every illness is different; that's not really debatable. The problem is how you treat people who suffer from an illness.
Imagine a friend is lying in bed and refuses to get up and go to work.
Let's go through some scenarios:
1) His pelvis is broken from a recent car accident.
2) He has a fever and fatigue from the flu.
3) He has testicular cancer and is recovering from yesterday's chemo.
4) He is depressed.
These scenarios are all fundamentally different. It's common for people to have sympathy in scenarios 1, 2, & 3: "Of course you can't get out of bed, poor fella'. Anything I can do to help?" It's common for people to be skeptical and annoyed by scenario 4: "Why won't you just get out of bed? What is wrong with you? Jesus, go for a walk or something. You need to get your act together."
These responses are caricatures, but they represent "the problem" that often results from people saying they believe "mental illness is fundamentally different." Mental illness is not identical to other illnesses, but to the sufferer, it is just as real and just as debilitating. The problem is that people treat it as less real – not a disease but more of a personal failing that needs to be overcome. You wouldn't tell a cancer patient to just get over it, but for many types of mental illness that is society's attitude.
You wouldn't tell a cancer patient to just get over it, but for many types of mental illness that is society's attitude.
Of course, because we understand how cancer works, enough to know that wishing it away, or meditating, is unlikely to address the problem, and has not been scientifically demonstrated to fight cancer.
There's a spectrum of severity and causes of mental illness. In some cases a patient needs to be medicated just to be able to get through a therapy session; in slightly less severe cases therapy can be tried first, but perhaps without medication the patient will never be normal. In a lot of cases, I think probably the majority, patients on psychotropic drugs could improve well into the normal range through therapy alone without meds. And there are cases where a particular social environment—like a middle class urban lifestyle, trying to make ends meet—may cause certain psychological disorders even when the same people in a different environment would be perfectly happy. Especially in that latter case, can that be called a "disease"?
If psychological intervention or environmental change is enough to turn someone normal, what does it mean to label them "diseased" before the intervention... particularly if the "disease" was due to bad prior psychosocial development (bad parenting and/or bad school/peer environments, generally), rather than genetics or something in the air or water? In other words, if the same person had grown up in a different social environment, or in a different culture, and failed to develop the psychological illness, can it be called a disease or illness at all?
(Of course, availability of professional therapy, or peers or parents who know how to intervene productively, may not exist in many cases. That's a separate issue.)
Psychiatry does not really distinguish the forms of psychological disease based on their likely cause, nor on whether they can be treated to acceptable norms without medication. I think that's what frustrates a lot of people who either object to, or are uncomfortable labeling DSM diagnoses as illnesses or diseases.
Very Well Said, but I would add...When it comes to Bipolar, not getting treatment and not getting medicated is extremely dangerous for everyone around you.
This mentality that its not a physical ailment literally has caused numerous suicides, spousal abuse, violent episodes, etc...
All completely avoidable if they were medicated and treated.
Thinking of mental disorders as fundamentally different leads people to fear seeking out treatment, which is the real problem.
Imagine a friend is lying in bed and refuses to get up and go to work.
Let's go through some scenarios: 1) His pelvis is broken from a recent car accident. 2) He has a fever and fatigue from the flu. 3) He has testicular cancer and is recovering from yesterday's chemo. 4) He is depressed.
These scenarios are all fundamentally different. It's common for people to have sympathy in scenarios 1, 2, & 3: "Of course you can't get out of bed, poor fella'. Anything I can do to help?" It's common for people to be skeptical and annoyed by scenario 4: "Why won't you just get out of bed? What is wrong with you? Jesus, go for a walk or something. You need to get your act together."
These responses are caricatures, but they represent "the problem" that often results from people saying they believe "mental illness is fundamentally different." Mental illness is not identical to other illnesses, but to the sufferer, it is just as real and just as debilitating. The problem is that people treat it as less real – not a disease but more of a personal failing that needs to be overcome. You wouldn't tell a cancer patient to just get over it, but for many types of mental illness that is society's attitude.
Does that clarify anything?