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"Deciding what "mental health' is, and when to "cross the border" have always been and will always be questions that have no "objective" answer, questions that one has always had to answer and will always have to answer "subjectively," ie in awareness that there is no "god's eye" view, and that one is always acting out of, and testing, one's current understanding.  "

I think that what Professor Grobstein said above (which I quoted) is true: where is the line drawn? What are the parameters of mental illness? Who decides who is sick and who is well? Those questions are complicated and hard to answer, and in our largely imperfect attempts to do so we've created decidedly faulty tools (like the DSM) and made clear mistakes along the way (like including homosexuality IN the DSM). Still, that is the goal of "getting things less wrong," isn't it? To recognize that there are mistakes, and to try and improve on them?

Because I do think there are ways in which mental illness and physical illness are akin to one another, and though they may very well not be analogous, I also think that in class we ignored the fact that a lot of physical illnesses also have many causes, some which are not always that clear. Many people with heart disease are genetically pre-disposed, some don't excersize enough, some smoke, lots have a combination of the four (and other) factors at work ... And some of those people will die of heart attacks, and some will catch it earlier and take treatment that will (likely, though certainly not necessarily work), and some may experience physical ailments ... But even more, there are still gradations in "healthy" hearts. My blood pressure is fine,  but I doubt I have the perfect heart ... So, some doctor somewhere has made a relative chouce about what a healthy heart does and doesn't look like.

In mental health, the structure is not drastically different than that, and just because we don't know exactly how to treat something doesn't mean there is no treatment. (If the big issue with disease is that it can cause physical harm and/or death, then the risks of psychological disease are not dissimilar ... )