Dan BC: I have found in my experience that the people using and applying the label 'mental illness' see it as some sort of barrier betwixt the person they are

Dan BC: I have found in my experience that the people using and applying the label 'mental illness' see it as some sort of barrier betwixt the person they are discussing and themselves. This is the 'normal' barrier. by relgating the person to this place (behind the wall as it were) a number of very large assumptions must be made, and my inclination is that some of these assumptions are pointless. once upon a time, abstraction may have been viewed as a nasty 'mental illness'. "Look at Grok. He so dumb. He tell me finger number could be more than hand plus hand. retard say dumbest things." We call people who are socially inept mentally ill because they do not fit will into the structure of society, not because they are actually broken. There is a difference between Down's and Autism.