But I cannot imagine a scenario where an emotional state or cognitive experience DIDN’T have a correlate in the brain!

The issue with mental illness is, to me, that there are some conditions that are exponentially more difficult than our normal experiences and we try to treat them as if they are just extensions of normal. The same tools used for simple sadness isn’t appropriate in depression, and standard psychotherapy isn’t usually strong enough for an eating disorder. I think we do well to respect the profound brain experience of mental illness.

i’d be interested in hearing what you mean by “real”. if it turned out that someone who, say, suffers from constant sadness, or someone who eats way too much didn’t have a correlate of that in the brain, would the suffering be less real, less serious?

I believe they are. That doesn’t mean a pill is the treatment – we don’t have a pill for them. But it does recognize that the patient is dealing with a real and very serious problem that will require excellent clinical and practical assistance to overcome.

@evan is politics a mental illness? good question! i know what you mean about the trivial advice. (“you should try st. john’s wort! it helped aunt hilda when her cat died!”) (not to minimize aunt hilda’s grief but you know what i mean …). and i, too, feel a bit strange about the word “mental illness”. however, i have to say that i have become more comfortable with it over the years. a cold is an illness. why not a bout with mania?

@anna nice to meet you here, and thanks for the comment! “everything in moderation” is, of course, just the thing that painfully eludes a person with an eating disorder …

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Anna

Lola x

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I guess I think mental illness is often trivialised – try out telling someone you’re depressed and experience the barrage of trivial advice.

I guess I see eating disorders as a mental illness in the sense of other behaviours that cause us harm. I’m uncomfortable with the term ‘illness’ though – it can lead to the idea of taking a pill for it rather than learning to enjoy our physicality and beauty.

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Perhaps “mental illness” is a term of art for industry professionals, but from where I sit (in ignorance) the description is fairly applied to eating disorders. After all, if you remove the patient’s brain, their eating disorder promptly disappears.

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