You're All Sick in the Head!

Now we know… Americans are all mentally ill. Well, not exactly all, but 20% are, and that’s a pretty substantial number. More than 45,000,000 if you want to see the integers. The next time you sit down for lunch with your four closest friends try figuring out which one is mentally ill, because the odds are that one of them is.

If you were wondering how the mental health profession sees you, now you know.

The numbers are so bizarre that you wonder whether these are just another set of self-serving statistics designed to gin up business for therapists.

I was going to write something about this, but then I discovered that the anonymous psychblogger also known as Shrinkwrapped had done it already. In his words: “Why don't we reserve the concept of Mental Illness for those who suffer from a serious definable Mental Disturbance that brings the person far out of the (wide) limits of normal human variability?  I know this would decrease the income of some Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Social Workers, and various Counselors, but to be human is to function less than optimally much of the time, worse during periods of high stress.  Pathologizing human variability and behavior is a sign of, dare I say, Mental Illness.”

Link here. Via Dr. Helen.