Whats the difference between a mental health disorder and a mental illness?
In: Other
No offense to previous poster, but that’s not necessarily how I would describe it. From my perspective as a professional in the industry Mental illness would just be an overall state of being unwell mentally, where as mental health disorders are more specific and generally refer to a singular diagnosis from the DSM5. I also think the term mental illness sounds just a bit more like taboo or something for some reason. If I was speaking about a client of mine, I would never say that they are mentally ill, I would say they have a diagnosis of X. Yea, I think that saying someone is mentally Ill is just a bit old fashioned or something. I think I’d also like to add that mental health is dimensional not categorical. Almost all people are going to have some aspects of their mental health that can be improved or worked on. If you are a very rigid thinker and likes things done a certain way, we as a society just say that that person is “uptight, tightly wound, detail oriented, etc”. But if you can’t shut the refrigerator door unless everything is in its exact spot, then we might say “you have issues, anal retentive, controlling, etc”. Once that same issue begins to impact your ability to be successful in life, because for instance you can’t maintain a job or friendships/relationships, because you’re too focused on this other thing, then you have a diagnosable condition. You can meet all of the diagnostic criteria (kind of like symptoms) for a certain mental health diagnosis, but if you are not experiencing “clinically significant impairment in at least one major area of your life” then you don’t need to be “diagnosed”.
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