3 ms·

> mentally ill Ah, and what is health? We use this term to talk about physical health (infections, disease, cancer), mental health and also habits (eating heal

> mentally ill Ah, and what is health? We use this term to talk about physical health (infections, disease, cancer), mental health and also habits (eating healthy, or playing video games all day isn't healthy). This starts to get really ambiguous. You're now applying societal standards, maybe throwing a little happiness index in there ... We don't see living alone in solitude as healthy. Yet this man claims to be find after decades, with pretty minimal human interaction. What is health? What even is his identity? If everyone made his decisions, humanity would cease to reproduce and exist? Is that were our baseline is? Homosexuality was in the DSM as a mental health condition. We treat anorexia as a mental disorder to be treated, as we do body integrity disorder, but we support gender reassignment surgery, even though they are all forms of body dymorphism. I ask again, what is health?

shawn 8y ago
Health, like beauty, is averages. If you take a group of people and average them, the resulting person is very likely considered pretty and healthy. https://leadingpersonality.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/average_faces_01.jpg https://leadingpersonality.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/avera... https://leadingpersonality.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/average-faces-of-men-and-women-around-the-world/ https://leadingpersonality.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/average-... There are evolutionary reasons for preferring averages. And the further you deviate from average behavior, the bigger the risk you run.
- Brian_K_White 8y ago
  So health and rightness and validity are a popularity contest? On average, a lot of people do a lot of things that I am happy to be deviant from. A lot of people eat at McDonalds and bury themselves in credit and loan debt. That overwhelming popularity does not all by itself constitute validity.
- qpooqpoo 8y ago
  But "mental health" also implies specific value judgements which are relative to the dominant ideology of a society or civilization. It's these value judgements that determine how the "averages" or the data in general, is interpreted. For example, if you lived in the middle ages and you were a radical atheist, no doubt that under that system of education and propaganda, you would have been deemed by that society to be "mentally ill" (or similar contemporary equivalent). The charge of "mental illness" or psychological pathology in general, has throughout history been weaponized to isolate and/or suppress politically incorrect or heretical ideas that run totally counter to the prevailing world-views.

shawn 8y ago

Health, like beauty, is averages. If you take a group of people and average them, the resulting person is very likely considered pretty and healthy. https://leadingpersonality.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/average_faces_01.jpg https://leadingpersonality.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/avera... https://leadingpersonality.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/average-faces-of-men-and-women-around-the-world/ https://leadingpersonality.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/average-... There are evolutionary reasons for preferring averages. And the further you deviate from average behavior, the bigger the risk you run.

Brian_K_White 8y ago
So health and rightness and validity are a popularity contest? On average, a lot of people do a lot of things that I am happy to be deviant from. A lot of people eat at McDonalds and bury themselves in credit and loan debt. That overwhelming popularity does not all by itself constitute validity.
qpooqpoo 8y ago
But "mental health" also implies specific value judgements which are relative to the dominant ideology of a society or civilization. It's these value judgements that determine how the "averages" or the data in general, is interpreted. For example, if you lived in the middle ages and you were a radical atheist, no doubt that under that system of education and propaganda, you would have been deemed by that society to be "mentally ill" (or similar contemporary equivalent). The charge of "mental illness" or psychological pathology in general, has throughout history been weaponized to isolate and/or suppress politically incorrect or heretical ideas that run totally counter to the prevailing world-views.