>The difference with autism and mental illness is that you are born with autism. That's probably not the case for eg schizophrenia or bi-polar, although there's

>The difference with autism and mental illness is that you are born with autism. That's probably not the case for eg schizophrenia or bi-polar, although there's probably genetic factors pre-disposing people to these illnesses for many cases. This seems a very odd way to differentiate what is and isn't a mental illness. Consider that the brain is a growing organism that is undergoing massive changes from soon after conception til near one enters middle age (28) with some minor changes after then, to define the point at birth as some baseline seems arbitrary. Take schizophrenia, while not present at birth there are some theories about how it works that would indicate it is there at birth but doesn't activate til late teen/early adult years (it has been a few years since I last read heavily into it). Or consider sexual orientations. Are you born with it? Well you aren't likely born attracted to one gender. You probably don't even have a concept of gender. But you may be born with an underlying structure that would give a really high predictability as to which you orientation you will even up having. (Note: I'm not saying any orientation is a mental illness; I'm only using it to give an example of something which you may or may not be born with depending upon how you view being born with something.)