4 ms·

> The most important being how much it affects your quality of life. This is unique among illnesses. Whether or not I have a cold does not depend on how much i

> The most important being how much it affects your quality of life. This is unique among illnesses. Whether or not I have a cold does not depend on how much it affects my quality of life. Why is mental illness different?

carlob 5y ago
Uh? If the cold didn't affect your quality of life we would call it an asymptomatic infection. But active symptoms do affect your quality of life...
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
If you go to a doctor and say "I think I have cold" but then you say you have no symptoms I don't think they are going to take you seriously... By definition symptoms affect your quality of life.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
The symptoms of a mental illness can overlap with normal variations of personality. It is very important to note this is overlap, *not* a spectrum! A person’s baseline can be altered by mental illness but not severely enough to be indistinguishable from a personality difference. Telling the two apart is damn near impossible. Since we don’t have blood tests, we cannot tell the difference. So we need to fall back on want little objective criteria can be found. Behavioral criteria can be skewed due to environment. An active kid who wants to run around isn’t going to do well being stuck in a classroom for six hours. A curious kid with ADHD, who would otherwise be a good student also won’t do well because they can’t stay on task. These look identical. (This is why ADHD is both over and under diagnosed.) This results in family history and quality of life being more objective than self-reported feelings.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Mostly because we know very little about mental illness, so we are just guessing. Previously, we had a terrible habit of identifying "mental illness" by external factors, such as meeting social and moral norms (so being gay was considered a mental illness, as was being troublesome). To avoid this, and given that our understanding of the fundamentals has barely improved, if at all, we have chosen to take an approach that is much less likely to cause extraordinary distress to people who are perfectly well. Remember that being labeled mentally ill can durectly rob you of your most basic human rights, so this is not a diagnostic that should be easily applied.

carlob 5y ago

Uh? If the cold didn't affect your quality of life we would call it an asymptomatic infection. But active symptoms do affect your quality of life...

zeroonetwothree 5y ago

If you go to a doctor and say "I think I have cold" but then you say you have no symptoms I don't think they are going to take you seriously... By definition symptoms affect your quality of life.

kayodelycaon 5y ago

The symptoms of a mental illness can overlap with normal variations of personality. It is very important to note this is overlap, *not* a spectrum! A person’s baseline can be altered by mental illness but not severely enough to be indistinguishable from a personality difference. Telling the two apart is damn near impossible. Since we don’t have blood tests, we cannot tell the difference. So we need to fall back on want little objective criteria can be found. Behavioral criteria can be skewed due to environment. An active kid who wants to run around isn’t going to do well being stuck in a classroom for six hours. A curious kid with ADHD, who would otherwise be a good student also won’t do well because they can’t stay on task. These look identical. (This is why ADHD is both over and under diagnosed.) This results in family history and quality of life being more objective than self-reported feelings.

tsimionescu 5y ago

Mostly because we know very little about mental illness, so we are just guessing. Previously, we had a terrible habit of identifying "mental illness" by external factors, such as meeting social and moral norms (so being gay was considered a mental illness, as was being troublesome). To avoid this, and given that our understanding of the fundamentals has barely improved, if at all, we have chosen to take an approach that is much less likely to cause extraordinary distress to people who are perfectly well. Remember that being labeled mentally ill can durectly rob you of your most basic human rights, so this is not a diagnostic that should be easily applied.