When Does An Illness Become A Serious Mental Illness? And Does Our Definition Divide Us?

Is definition by diagnosis the right approach or should it be based on definition by functioning? Thoughts welcomed.

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When it is a life long condition it is serious. That includes pretty much all mental illness. As for does it divide us? From the general public? I’d say yes, between other mental illnesses I think it unites us in a way that we have been documented as not normal and labeled.

Quote:
“I’m always at a loss: as I’ve said before, our diagnoses are not precise, prognoses can be wrong, and people can be very sick at one point in time and very well at others.”

As someone who was once on forced outpatient drugging, I personally feel they cast too wide of a net with their definition of s.m.i. I was never violent, never committed a crime, and yet I was forced to take antipsychotic meds against my will even after being released from the hospital after my suicide attempts. There should be informed consent with any meds that have serious side effects.

If you were trying to kill yourself, then I really don’t think that the net was too wide. That is seriously mentally ill, about as serious as it gets.

Killing others and broadmoor? Smi

A serious mental illness is defined as: Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective disorder, Bipolar disorder, or Major depression. And only those. Personality disorders or anxiety disorders like O.C.D. or P.T.S.D. are not considered serious mental illnesses however much they ravage people’s lives.

http://www.odmhsas.org/eda/advancedquery/smi.htm

Thank you. This must be new. I was unfamiliar with this new definition. Even though it’s been around since the 80’s. In the 80’s, they were still teaching the old definition.

http://nchod.uhce.ox.ac.uk/mentalillness.pdf See pages 90-93.