illnesses, i.e. they're not biological illnesses, is an interesting
journey. Many haven't been through it. The social disability exists for
the people who have the diagnosis though.
A depressed person is impaired because society doesn't accept depressed
people. Unhappiness is not an illness but it has an impact on a person's
life and society is maladapted to deal with it. Psychiatry was developed
to rectify the problem but its purpose is to make people 'normal', i.e.
to make the disability go away by changing the individual.
The problem is that the disability is a dysfunction of society. It
exists for the individual in the society and time and culture they live
in but it is not a real disability outside those variables. It means a
person is not disabled by they are disabled by society.
The next iteration of the mental health system - in whatever form - will
look to change societies and cultures so they accept the braod spectrum
of the human race and the human condition.
It just fucking sucks for those people who have to live in a time when
psychiatric methods are the main option to remove the disability, rather
than acceptance.
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