Mental illness is still massively misunderstood

Well, that's disagreement as to what should be considered faulty or pathological. The fundamental problem is that they have no idea how the mind works, and they have this manual that approaches the mind like a black box and makes very aggressive assumptions about it using a logical process which is identical to that which gives rise to prejudice. If someone doesn't like you, they can very easily pretend you have conditions you don't, and it's not logically falsifiable, i.e. via blood test.

In my experience, my gut instinct is to agree with your take on this - back in the day, being gay used to be regarded as a mental disorder and even though some would love to see it being returned to that, it’s never going to happen 

I keep saying that the DSM is like a tome of superficial criteria which are used to make profound assumptions about human beings. How does that differ from the concept of prejudice?

I won't say that psychiatry is totally without merit, but it does get abused.

What you stated is very wise. We live in a society that is unhealthily politically correct and risk averse to the point that actually the system is rubbish sometimes because it takes a sledgehammer to a ltittle nut in its way of dealing with problems.

In regards to the mental institution point I agree; in my culture (as I have Carribean background) if you have mental health or autism (same applies to other disabilities) half the time the family don't care - they will just sweep everything under the rug and avoid dealing with you.

I am lucky my parents have been (and always will be) supportive of me when it comes to my autism but can't say the same for extended family or family friends. I recently had a panic attack at work and a family friend said I was deliberately putting it on and saying some nasty things about my personal life and how I am "educated enough" to get over it. They even brought up how my deceased cousin (one of my only other close family members who was murdered mind you) would be disappointed in me. 

This is why I remain no contact with family nowadays, because they will never know what it is like to be in my shoes.

With mental health there's often a lot of misunderstanding and misdiagnosis occuring. A few years ago my autism and meltdowns were mistaken by the mental health team I was involved with as mental illness. I had to leave their services in the end as they were pressuring me to take medication and go in to hospital for my own safety.

That's actually a myth. In fact we pretty much use all of our brains and just about all of it is pretty active. 

It is an interesting topic of study.

I researched some solutions to poor mental health on my urban planning and design undergraduate degree. 

I found a lot of problems could be resolved by implementing place-based solutions such as community gardens due to them having many benefits, be it social, environmental or economic. 

I don't think drugs will solve the answer to mental health issues. My nan suffered from mental health issues, which I now believe is linked to her having high brain activity, autism and a fixed interest in computers and programming. She was given drugs to suppress her issues which in turn did not make her better, but possibly worse. 

More understanding of neurodiversity is required, and further study on how to create a more inclusive world for neurodiverse individuals. And to properly accommodate those with mental health issues, and not to isolate them because society views them as a burden which cannot be fixed. 

Yeh your spot on there I think. I was reading how inflammation might be responsible for autism, depression and anxiety and other mental health conditions. Very interesting stuff. Antidepressants have anti inflammatory properties. Temple grandin the autistic author said how Prozac helped her inflammatory bowel disease go away. Temple grandin is cool I read one of her books.

The problem is that the general philosophy is 'stop loss'.

It's about avoiding harm, rather than bettering one's life.

The media have our health service at their mercy. One mistake, and BOOM! It's all over the news.

Our society is reactive, rather than proactive.

I agree with you. Years ago many of us would have been put in big insane asylums. Now I think many people are just ignored and excluded from society and as you say given random drugs.

The problem is that the only evidence they usually have is our self-reported experience which is often misleading or inaccurate and certainly won’t provide a complete picture (if I said I had a sore tummy that would be my experience, but there are probably dozens of possible causes).

I really hope that machine learning applied to brain scans might be able to turn psychology into a hard science instead of whatever the heck it is now.

Hay yes I agree with you there and there is lack of support as well. 

My instinct is that so-called mental healthcare “professionals” start from a standpoint of point-blank refusal to understand anything about mental health conditions including autism and if they are not encouraging a culture of ridiculing and bullying of people with ASD, they are dismissing as “nonsense” and discrediting everything that we say, with statements along the lines of “you don’t understand that you are the only one that is wrong by default and that everyone else is always right” and as far as they are concerned, if only we would just “keep quiet” and just be “seen and not heard” in all instances, by default, regardless of the facts and circumstances, one size fits all, which they are fully prepared to rigidly enforce by all means, however abhorrent 

I dont claim to know a lot about the subject, but, i am begining to think that many diagnosed with a nental health condition, have a neurodevelopmental condition. Misdiagnosis is keeping the mental health practitioners in jobs. Prescriptions are handed out to easily. My feelings are very mixed, from anger to liberation. At 59 finding out that i am autistic. Repeatedly prescribed antidepressants, switched from one to anither every time i had a melt down. I didnt know. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD last week. He was diagnosed as autistic last year, aged 60! Repeatedly told he has a typical personality disorder! I know velieve i also have ADHD. OMG. What will i do now? Seek a diagnosis and get the correct treatment, i have nothing to loose now. I am dismayed. Years ago, like my mother, and many others we would have been placed in a mental institution, drugged. People are still being wrongly drugged. I think you can tell how i feel about this. My respect for mental health practitioners has gone. 

In former times, the only source for information on all such topics was the Catholic Church, especially in the Medieval era, where frankly, all such knowledge should have remained, viewed through the prism of Traditional Catholic Social Teaching - in more recent times, this knowledge has been hijacked and used for the benefit of the select few, who have misused this knowledge for evil purposes - meanwhile, we have others who simply refuse to understand and use this as an excuse to deny needed funding - later experiments have been horrific and have been proven to have no real other benefit other than to intensify human suffering, such as with happened with the *** - there is a reason why, for a very long time, science and scientific knowledge remained the exclusive preserve of the Catholic Church in the Medieval era and rightly so 

Well They reckon over 75 % of our brain is a mystery, and that we only actually use about  !0 %  !
...... or in My case 1 %