Nearly 1 in 5 Americans had mental illness in 2009
What’s with the “had”? Is mental illness something one can catch, like a cold? Something that just happens or is built into one’s DNA like inherited diseases? What?
“Mental illnesses”, unless they have a physical cause, are personal choices made manifest. Period. One doesn’t “have” personal choices except in the sense that one makes personal choices. Period. Oh, one might have options and perceptions, and make one’s choices based on perceived options, thus resulting in “mental illnesses” of one sort or another as sort of, semi-almost “defined” by that ever-expanding excuse for “mental health professionals” to bill insurance companies, the DSM-X. Why! As the p-sych professionals expand those behaviors (often once considered normal or merely perhaps a wee tad eccentric) they want to be paid by insurance companies for “treating” I’ll be surprised if there’s on non-“mentally ill” person left in America.
*feh* I’d say a lack of personal responsibility is the cause of most “mental illness” cited by “mental health professionals” as things they want to get to get paid for “treating”. And failure to accept personal responsibility for one’s attitudes, feelings and behaviors is primarily an ethical and moral illness, not a mental one.