What if doctors didn't deal with mental health?

From my (poor) knowledge of the history of psychiatry there seemed a
point where society decided mental illness was an illness and to be
treated by the medical profession. I think it was Maudsley who said that
the new field of psychiatry would take the finest minds and the best
doctors.

What if things had been different? For one thing the medical viewpoint
justifies the use of medication in the 20th century. After all, pills
treat illness.

What if it had been the philosophers who were tasked with dealing with
the mental health problematic. Their cold logic may have stepped too
quickly to sterilisation and the eugenics practices seen in Hitler's
Germany.

What if in some other dimension it was the bankers who were faced with
dealing with the mentally ill? The monies they'd raised were put to
house those who were least well off. In this imaginary world they'd see
the mentally ill as an unused resource, as something that while housed
could be used to make things. The banerk's asylum system would integrate
work into the system and perhaps a financial rewards. But perhaps there
were mad work houses in real history?

What if it was the legal profession who had jurisdiction over the
mentally ill. They'd have pushed for a scientific basis for a diagnostic
system far quicker because the current approach isn't just or fair. I'd
hope they'd understand what incaceration means better than doctors do
because they're familiar with its use as a punishment.

I fear the engineers could be worse than the doctors in what they did to
the mentally ill. Engineering can bring about the worst soluton that
just fits the specification, especially in resource constrained
environments. Engineers tend to be less dogmatic than scientists or
religious folk so perhaps they'd have a freer system.

Of course it was from religion that psychiatry took the role of looking
after and judging upon the mentally ill. Now the witches and heretics
and saints are all diagnosed with severe mental illnesses. I'm glad the
treeatment option of being burned at the stake isn't in use any more
though I wish the psychiatric profession had some sort of positive
diagnosis with severe mental illness such as canonisation or other
recognition of spiritual and religious experiences.
I doubt homosexuality would have ever stopped being a mental illness.
And being an unmarried mother too too. In fact I wonder what disorder
would be applied to atheists if religion had stayed as the curator of
the mad.

If you understand that other professions could have taken over instead
of psychiatry then I think you understand that it's not really an
illness. Not really.