The stigma of being an arsehole

Lets assume there's a separation between a mental illness and an arsehole, which may or may not be true depending on the model of mental illness you choose.

An arsehole is a highly inflammatory word to use when debating mental illnesses, personality disorders and some separate type described as an arsehole. It is a highly stigmatised person who may have certain traits that make them disabled.

I'm going to say there's a total separation between an arsehole and a mentally ill person (and by mentally ill I include personality disorders because while they may not fit the pure Kraepilan biomedical model they fit every other defintion of mental illness and human behaviour that falls under the purview of the mental healthcare system, in my opinion). Lets also assume mental illness is an illness as well.

An arsehole, and I mean a real arsehole, is a heavily stigmatised person. Implicitly an arsehole is someone who is disliked - there are very, very few aresholes who are genuinely liked. Those that can bear an arsehole - because that's what it really is, not "be friends with" - exist but they may be few and far between. The arsehole will have lower social and occupational outcomes compared to a group of non-arseholes. They're a pain in the arse as friends and as colleagues, which is why arseholes end up where they end up.

Lets say someone did some research. First they come up a defintion of an arsehole that the academics can agree on. They may develop a scale of arsehole measures that can be combined to score an arsehole. Of course everyone's a bit of an arsehole so they create a cut off point where the person can be defined as a total arsehole. The results show the reduced social and occupational outcomes based on a controlled study that uses...that technique whose name I'm can't remember where they match the people in the control and experiment group. (sorry....a random joke again....they're called matched studies I think). They could develop an evidence-based, statistically based operational definition of a cluster of symptoms to identify arseholes in clinical practice. And then, of course, they could treat them and make them like the non-arsehole group.

When I use the word "stigma" I'm not talking about diagnosis. I'm talking about the symptoms - the behaviours and the experiences - that make up what are emotional and behavioural disorders (or mental health problems, mental health difficulties, mental health experiences, mentalness) in 2010.