What Is Mental Illness - 1380 Words

What is Mental Illness? In my essay, I will be looking to answer this deceptively simple question by exploring various avenues, mainly making a comparison both the medical and philosophical differences. I will attempt to first make a distinct definition of what mental illness is as a medical term, defining exactly what it is, how it affects us and people around us. I believe this is an important definition to make as it allows us to better understand mental illness in medicine, mainly how it affects our minds and daily life, which will greater allow us to approach the question philosophically. I will be explore how some believe that mental illness is an encroaching problem on modern society in terms of the amount of people affected by it,†¦show more content†¦Because it is something that affects one’s mind, it is more difficult to define such as a physical illness, which is why there are lots of debates, as to what mental illness is, and what defines a feeling as being an illness. According to some statistics one in four adults in the UK are affected by mental illness in any given year [2], making it one of the most ‘populated’ diseases in the country and even the world. This statistic really lends itself to either say, mental illness is a huge problem in the world, and is something we really need to address and work on, or that mental illness is being exaggerated, and people having bad or uncomfortable feelings are too easily being chalked up to an illness. To further explore this idea, we can look at how some people both past and present have defined mental illness in its medical state, and see if we can understand which one of the statements is true, again this should give us a better standpoint when we approach it philosophically. Mental illness would fall into the category of psychiatry, as it is a psychological illness, and therefore is treated by doctors whose expertise is in the mind. If we were to assume that mental illness does in fact exist,