the idea that someone can suffer from a mental illness is pure fabrication. take the example of depression. there is no way of knowing from a brain scan whether someone has depression. this is not a disease. it is a judgment call. people who are deemed gloomy or themselves feel that they are not having fun, seek chemical treatment for their imagined disease. of course they are going to feel better. drugs often make people feel better whether they are stigmatized by labels or not. imo we often forget that life can be difficult, but just because someone does not enjoy life as much as is expected does not make them sick.

there are places in the world where schizophrenia does not exist. if a person labeled schizophrenic went to live there he/she would no longer have schizophrenia. if a person has cancer and they go to to live with another culture they still have cancer. this is because cancer is a real disease. it takes two people to have schizophrenia (a fake disease) but only one person to have cancer (a real disease). to label someone as schizophrenic is akin to claiming their soul has been lost or that they are possessed by spirits.

in our modern western society anything that is deemed deviant (gambling, drug use, too much sex, too little sex etc) is considered a disease and almost anything that is pleasurable is considered a treatment (sex therapy, drug therapy, pet therapy, talking therapy etc). we currently live in a state run medico-religious culture where punishing people for the crimes they have commited is out of favor because poverty is a disease. poverty is not a disease just as being rich is not a treatment. it is a social judgment.

psychiatry is the modern religion where what used to be called sin is now refered to as mental illness. "Ethics: obsolete; superseded by the diagnosis and treatment of disease." - Thomas Szasz