why, Why, WHY THE FUCK do so many people consider mental illnesses to not be "real" diseases!? I've seen a ton of posts online, particularly on Reddit, over the last several weeks making statements that either flat-out wrong (people can pick themselves up, bro!) or completely and willfully ignorant ("There's no evidence for chemical imbalances in the brain in depression.")
No, no, no; FUCK THAT SHIT. Mental illnesses are not "mental" illnesses, they are PHYSICAL diseases in the same goddamn way cancer is. They are not "all in your head," they do not just require a pick-me-up, and they are NOT failures of character. Just because you have some half-baked criticism of the pharmaceutical industry does NOT invalidate reams of data showing there are "chemical imbalances" in the brains of patients with depression, schizophrenia, and a slew of other disorders. Just because you claim you "felt depressed once, but I got over it!" does NOT mean that you suffered from clinical depression. And just because you can't see the mechanistic, genetic and physiological root causes of these illnesses does NOT give you a free pass to lay judgment on their validity.
Just...dammit. It tears me up seeing so many people discount depression--the leading cause of disability worldwide--as nothing more than "feeling sad."
This is the best summary of the subject I've seen, and it's so maddening that this opinion is so commonplace.