There's a certain truth to that - but the flipside is, of course, that not all (mental) illness labels are equally stigmatising. Some individuals (and I'm thinking here of celebrities in desperate need of 'edge' but many, many non-famous types too) actively seek out certain diagnostic labels...
(Rage: you are Pink, and I claim my free Kookyworld VIP laminate.)
I guess I was trying, in my earlier post, to address Lyra's original premise - that we might be 'pre-programmed' (in an evolutionary 'poorly-viable breeding-partner' sense?) to give the mentally ill a body-swerve. The sociological context to this argument would suggest that mental illness might be inherently bad for any given society.
I'm arguing that this isn't the case. Firstly, what is and isn't considered mental disorder in the twenty-first century very probably doesn't map onto what was considered 'pathological' (if such a framing device existed) in centuries past. In other historical/cultural contexts, hearing voices may well have been a desirable trait. As I've said, it's a truism that madness and genius share a common continuum; manic individuals are not infrequently overwhelmed with ideas and creativity, and many of history's supposed geniuses were also known to experience extreme mood swings (hence, I guess, the relative desirability of a modern diagnosis of 'manic-depression').
As with death and dying, mental illness has become largely sequestered in our western culture, and I agree that whole tranches of 'normal behaviour' (bereavement, adolescence, dissatisfaction) are in danger of becoming irreversibly medicalised - particularly in the US, where the 'American Dream' perfectibility of mankind often outweighs the more existentialist (yep, suffering is relevant) European approach. Deciding what does and doesn't constitute 'mental illness' is frequently a precarious task. |
