Add to flourishing

There is the outcome of disability. How well a person is doing in life.

People with mental illnesses can do well before their diagnosis. After their diagnosis their life course dips. Some remain undiagnosed and their life course dips while others continue their life course without treatment.

This measure of how well a person is doing in life is represented by the proxy measures of social and occupational outcomes. They're not perfect but they describe how a person is doing in life.

This is an important quantity in the conceptualisations of mental health and illness related to the diagnosis.

There's the part where doctors judge a person mentally ill. There's the part where people suffer. Then there's the part where people do less well in life. 3 continua.

Let's take someone like John Nash. He was a brilliant scientist and a schizophrenic. Doctors called him mentally ill. He suffered. But he also overcame a small part of the disability. He was given the opportunity to contribute to academia and his contribution got him a Nobel Prize. He may be the only schizophrenic ever get a Nobel Prize.

He is one in a million. Most people with his talent would be subsumed by the prognosis of mental illness. Their ability or potential were not brought to fruition. Their lives are overcast by exclusion and discrimination. Misunderstood, undervalued and suffering all the prejudices which the mentally ill suffer. Many people with mental illness suffer this, this awful life because of their difference.

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