> No, it's not, it's a subset of physical illness. It's not even possible for it to be otherwise without magic. I think GP's point is that you can't determine

> No, it's not, it's a subset of physical illness. It's not even possible for it to be otherwise without magic. I think GP's point is that you can't determine a mental illness with physical characteristics/measurements. Can you diagnose schizophrenia with a blood test? X-Rays? Nope. Perhaps an MRI? Maybe, though AFAIK this still isn't really possible. With physical illnesses it's easy. Broken bone. Cancer. Viral infection. All of these can be diagnosed without communicating to the patient at all, simply by making physical observations using chemistry and physics. Not so with mental illness. With mental illness you basically have to just talk to the patient, take their word at face value, and then deduce based on symptom pattern matching. A determined fraudster could fake a mental illness, and it would be impossible for doctors to be able to tell AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong), the same which cannot be said for tumors.