The difference between the psychiatric and the politically correct movement's understanding of the meaning of mental illness and me just rambling on as I usually do

I've read a fair amount of material that would be read by psychiatrists,
psychologists and their ilk. I've also worked at a politically correct
mental health organisation, the kind of place where it's not amusing not
put up a poster saying "You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps."

The mentally ill aren't called mental ill at the place I used to work.
They're not even called people with mental health problems. There's a
special language there that goes a step beyond. It's excellent language
to use when interacting with the public and people who stigmatise mental
illness. It's also excellent language to use to sell an idea.

Psychiatrists and doctors may have a more profound understanding of
mental illness. A person is a schizophrenic or a manic depressive. It is
actually what a person is in the same way as a person can be described
by gender or by race. Those descriptions apply to the individual. The
descriptions are also as equally useless in that they tell little to
nothing about what the person is actually like.

One form of intepretation is very....amenable and sensitive to how a
person may feel to be described as mentally ill. However it is without
the understanding of what mentally illness actually means. I haven't
quite managed to sum up what it actually means but the psychiatric view
is very different to the politically correct, public and media-friendly
view.

Meaning and concepts are vitally important. Mental health is an
exceptionally complicated concept and deeply difficult to define in a
useful way. The public-friendly view of mental health and healthcare is
that it is compassionate and this is broadly true I think and the
psychiatric system is getting better and better. I think psychiatrists
are also aware of what else it is. It is a line drawn between what is
normal and what is not, and this is not a constant. It may also
unwittingly be a form of social control to make people normal and make
people fit in because society is maladapted to the full spectrum of
humanity, perhaps as a result of the Industrial Revolution which
required the creation of mindless automatons capable of repeatedly and
consistently doing the same thing day in and day out and the need for
people to be 'normal' so large collectives could work together.

The language a person wants to hear upon inital diagnosis is not "mad",
"mentally diseased", "mentally disordered" or even "mentally ill" and
this is true for many people who haven't gotten past their own self
stigma of mental illness, preferring instead to think of it as a
different concept that makes changing them into a 'normal' person much
easier. If the psychiatric system wasn't there to make people fit in and
be 'normal' then those people would be excluded and outcast. They would
be homeless, penniless and jobless because of the maladaption of society.

To record and research the effects of difference on life outcomes then
to offer support and 'treatment' to modify the person into something
that won't have those outcomes is compassionate. It is necessary. It is
a necessary evil in my opinion and the lesser of the evils would be to
remember that people can change and learn to accept each other and our
differences.