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"Mental illnesses are not the result of personal weakness, lack of character or poor upbringing."
Individual fear of... there for the grace of god go I... and societal promotion of "us" and "them", "normal" and "abnormal" continue to alienate people living with mental illness from people not living with diagnosed mental illness. The culture of mental illness is percieved as one of sickness and sickness is not permitted in the dominant American paradigm because it is a weakness. Yet one may have a fashionable mental illness such as ADD or ADHD, the diagnosis for a society of men and women and children whose focus is trained to brief visual and sound clips and who flit and dart amongst the too much choice of just about everything except deep personal connection and globally sustainable values, then one may be perceived as creative, artistic or at least someone with an exotic tinge.

There are people with genuine mental health problems. I perceive these problems on a continuum. Caveat; I actually know very little about what I am speaking but have lived 58 years working with individuals and groups in the arts and have recently completed an internship in domestic violence and am currently working with drug and alcohol population. Many problems diagnosed for reasons of insurance payments may be traumatic stress related symptoms and habitual coping pattterns that may be identified and worked with from a bio/psycho/social perspective. The stigma of labeling is avoidable. Recent neuroscience finds interventions that employ the body and mind in traumatic stress therapy are more sucessful than just talk therapy. But what is success? Helping a soldier to make normal his/her surreal experiences? Helping a victim of domestic violence contextualize her abuse, her brainwashing?
The study of the brain and the newest understanding of it is a topic of political concern.