Re: Define mental illness?

Joshua Shinavier wrote:
> and such external
> circumstances do not affect an actual psysiological illness such as, say,
> "depression" in one sense of the word.
That's not entirely true.  External circumstances can trigger or deepen
depression, or mediate depression.  The depression itself is chemical,
and once triggered, tends to be self-feeding, in that a depressed person
does not derive joy from good circumstances, and tends to be very
pessimistic, viewing the thorn and not the rose, so to speak.

> it's a ridiculous thing to attach personal importance to
> as it has nothing to do with one's actual person, but rather with one's
> physiology.
True, but people also attach personal importance to things like beauty
or strength, which are, in part, due to physiology, i.e., certain people
are blessed with body forms deemed beautiful in our culture, or blessed
with muscles which respond well to training.

> it is -- NOT -- the same thing as sadness.  Feels like hell, but that can be
> dealt with ;-)
Altho depression has sadness as a symptom, it's quite true.  I'd say
it's like the difference between being simply tired from not getting
enough sleep, and being weak from anemia.

> Mental illness is a bodily condition, not a personality problem.
Technically, I suppose you could say that, but it's in the brain, which
is, after all, intimately bound up in the mind.

> good thing there are also better and
> less problematic languages out there, though it's a shame more people don't
> use them ;)
Ah, finally back to conlanging!  :-)  At the risk of starting a
flameskirmish, those "better and less problematic" languages are only
"better and less problematic" in our current culture.  When our culture
changes (as it must, culture is never static), it will cease to be so
good and unproblematic.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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