Do You Have a Mental Illness, or Are You Just Human?

My experience as a patient diagnosed with various disorders (CPTSD, MDD, GAD, ADHD) made me reevaluate the concept of mental illness. Is the patient abnormal for being mentally “disordered”, or is their “illness” simply a normal response to the stressors they have faced?

In the past, I had to take more than five pills every day to manage the cluster of disorders I had accumulated like Pokémon cards. I had a pill for each disorder and another to counteract the side effects of the others. Medications also often have side effects, increase the risk of adverse drug reactions, and are expensive.

Thankfully, I am no longer dependent on my medication. While I think medications can be beneficial for some people, I found it more empowering to view my mental condition not as a “disorder” but as reasonable distress resulting from trauma or a response to stress. Trauma can also manifest as somatic symptoms — the feeling of physical illness. It is a trained fight-or-flight response triggered by familiar stimuli.

What counts as a mental illness?

More than the mere absence of psychological problems, mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realises their abilities, copes with the normal stresses of life, and contributes to their community (WHO, 2007).

Mental illness is defined as “a clinically diagnosable disorder that significantly interferes with an individual’s cognitive, emotional or social functioning” (Department of Health and Aged Care).

The DSM-5 defines mental disorders as “clinically significant disturbances in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour… usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities.”

Yet I felt these definitions were incomplete. After all, what does “normal stresses of life” mean? Is living under the Trump administration a “normal” source of stress? What about working two jobs in a capitalist dystopia? What about being born into an abusive household and still living in it? What about living in a war-torn country?

What if my mental illness symptoms help me survive the condition I am in? Isn’t that the basis for trauma-related disorders? Sure, PTSD is not useful to the person once they are out of the dangerous situation. But what if they are still stuck in a dangerous situation? Their PTSD is just a survival mechanism — so is it a mental illness?

If “an expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not considered a mental disorder” (DSM-5), why is sadness at having survived abuse or having to toil one’s life away in meaningless, minimum-wage jobs considered a mental illness?

Anti-psychiatry and alternative perspectives

Regarding these issues, the anti-psychiatry movement offers alternative perspectives. The core thesis of the movement is the rejection of categorising people as “disordered”, arguing that “disorders” are a construct used to justify pathologising people who do not fit conventional norms, thereby enabling authorities in power to impose coercive and harmful treatment practices on these “patients”.

German social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm also notes the distinction between the states of “having” and “being”: having a mental illness (I have CPTSD) versus being in a certain state (I am suffering because of your abuse).

By labelling the patient as “having” a disorder, the language inherently shifts the focus to the inherent quality of this patient, rather than to what the patient has experienced that resulted in their suffering.

The movement argues that the field of psychiatry was created not to improve patients’ mental health, but that mental health became a concern only when it threatened public order, with governments particularly prominent in the management of the insane.

Pathologising neurodivergent people (this not only includes people with autism and ADHD, but also other clinically diagnosable mental “disorders”) serves to enforce cultural norms and systematically disempowers people’s lived experiences.

Big Pharma and forced treatment

Given the diversity of perspectives and lived experiences in every community, framing psychological experience as illness is inherently harmful; it alienates rather than connects. It can also be argued that the practice of pathologising people to boost pharmaceutical sales effectively maintains the wealth and power of institutions such as “big pharma”.

Forced hospitalisations and mandatory medication may also violate patients’ human rights and bodily autonomy, potentially worsening their quality of life. The history of psychiatry is riddled with inhumane treatments, as early approaches prioritised public safety over the patient’s well-being or recovery.

After the prevalence of shell shock during WWI, which affected “normal” individuals, psychiatrists realised that anyone could succumb to “nervous” illness, challenging the previous notion that only people born defective could have a mental illness. This revelation incentivised the industry to pivot towards more humane treatment.

Further developments in treatment and the anti-psychiatry movement sparked interest in psychosocial interventions, which led to de-institutionalisation. New treatments prompted an open-door policy, with individuals treated on an outpatient basis, such as visiting a therapist’s office rather than being confined in an asylum. Asylums began to close, and treatment shifted to the community.

Yet, even today, it is not uncommon for patients to remain silent about their condition to avoid forced hospitalisation. Patients, such as those experiencing psychosis, are often medicated and treated against their will.

For example, the Australian Mental Health Act allows patients to be compelled to take prescribed medication while in the community and to undergo blood tests to prove it, due to the stigma that patients are necessarily dangerous.

Cultural bias in perceiving mental illness

Our perception of mental disorders is also filtered through a homogeneous cultural lens, even though non-Western cultures offer a myriad of interpretations of different mental dispositions. In certain cultures, individuals with schizophrenia or psychosis would be considered shamans for their ability to hear voices and see another world.

In our society, these people would be undervalued, disrespected, forcibly treated, and even stripped of their human rights. While stigma may manifest in insidious ways, such as misrepresentations of mental ill-health in the mass media, it can also manifest in more acute ways, such as denying someone housing or employment due to their mental condition (Fox et al., 2017; Groot et al., 2020).

Mental illness as a normal response to trauma

The anti-psychiatry movement holds that mental health exists on a spectrum and that mental illness is a normal response to trauma. Rather than calling patients mentally “disordered”, it is less stigmatising to say they are mentally unwell — suggesting a temporary phase rather than a more permanent label.

In particular, we should also be wary of the incentive big pharma has to promote medication use, even when it may be useful for some patients. Instead of telling yourself that you have CPTSD, which results in your CPTSD symptoms, isn’t it more revealing to admit that you were sexually abused as a child, making it hard to trust people?

I think it is more accurate to call it a response and reaction rather than an “illness”, which suggests something stemming from within the body. In fact, mental ill health is the result of biopsychosocial influences; trauma, when experienced over long periods of time, can change your and your children’s DNA through epigenetics.

Conclusion

To flatten the depth of our experiences by labelling them as a mere “illness” is a form of gaslighting. You say you are the problem; there is something wrong with you.

It is pertinent to note that the subjective way we pathologise people into categories of illness makes them targets of expressed negative stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, which may worsen their mental condition.

It may be worth considering that different forms of mental experience, such as psychosis, are another form of human experience that can be insightful when those experiences are respected, just as one may be elevated to the status of a village shaman.

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This post was previously published on An Injustice!

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