Andy wrote:
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> Well, I sort of did, but I was referring to clinical mental illness.
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> Andy
I missed that. Unless you mean mercvury poisoning or somethng similar there is no such thing as a "clinical mental illness." Brain chemistry, of course, is involved in the slightest thougt or perception -- it takes a chemical change for you to read these words. Hence activity of neural transmitters is obviously inseparable from all mental activity, including "mental illness." Hence _sometimes_ various pathologcial conditons can be changed with chemicals that affect the flow of those transmitters. But all that does _not_ add up to a clinical mental illness."
That said, the stigma on mental illness is still strong enough, and of course stronger in some social contexts than others, that it is absorbed by a person suffering from a particular illness (in a process analogous I suppose to the "self-hating Jew." It can _help_ some patients, then, to be able sto say, to others and to themselves, "I suffer from a chemical imbalance in the brain." And putting it that way to themselves and others probably even contributes to them controlling the illness, i.e., affectng that chemical imbalance or whatever process it is that we call a chemical ibalance.
Carrol