Talk:Mental illness denial

Merge proposal
There is a proposal to merge this article, mental illness denial, into mental disorder. Please join the discussion. --Xurizuri (talk) 01:34, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Cited reference may not fit article
I just read the 2nd referenced article, which is excellent. However it doesn’t seem to fit the topic of mental illness denial. It’s not saying depression doesn’t exist. It simply explains that “depression,” per se, is not an official diagnosis.

From the article:

"'Depression' is a mood state and as a symptom, it can be part of many different psychiatric disorders that are, despite some overlap in symptomatology, as different as night and day when it comes to clinical presentation and response to various treatments."

"Diagnoses include major depression (both unipolar and bipolar), dysthymia, adjustment disorder with depression, depression due to a medical condition, and depression due to a substance. Medical conditions that can lead to depressive symptoms include hypothyroidism, some strokes, and stimulant withdrawal. Furthermore, 'depression,' as used colloquially, can be a normal mood that is part of broader unhappiness or grief."

From: 'Depression' Is a Symptom, Not a Disorder

https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/depression-is-a-symptom-not-a-disorder?_csrf_attempted=yes

Seeker718 (talk) 07:15, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

What is this page actually about?
As others have previously suggested, this page seems to be a mish mash of different concepts under one umbrella:

1. A wide movement that criticises the way that psychiatrists classify and treat mental illnesses, e.g. Szasz, scientology, anti-psychiatry. (Crucially, this isn't a denial that mental distress exists and causes suffering - it's a discussion about how we view and treat it)

2. A tendency for individuals to deny that they are mentally ill, e.g. the argument about narcissism being related, and the overtrained athletes example.

3. Broader cultural denial that mental illness exists at all, e.g. in the South Park and India examples.

There doesn't seem to be consensus about which topic(s) this page should cover. 1 is already being pointed out as something that's covered by the Anti-psychiatry page. I think 2 and 3 are more likely to be relevant, however you could easily argue that 2 belongs on the Mental Disorders page.

I'd welcome other people's thoughts on this, because this page is currently suffering a bit of an identity crisis. Djelibey (talk) 14:54, 23 July 2022 (UTC)


 * On 2. we also have Insight and Anosognosia which may cover the material from the "medical" angle.
 * On 3. I don't know if this is covered by anti-psychiatry, but it's worth noting things like the Voice hearing network which are groups of individuals who deny their diagnoses exist. I'd throw in that homosexual movements would have been considered "mental illness denial" groups in the 50s and 60s.
 * There's probably some stuff on social construction of disease going on here (see Medicalization for some details). Talpedia (talk) 14:13, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Just a small correction - Hearing Voices Network groups do not deny the existence of any diagnosis. They are self-help groups that posit that relatively uncommon experiences like hearing voices, seeing visions, etc. can be understood in a lot of different ways, that treating those experiences exclusively as a symptom that must be eliminated using psychiatric drugs is not the only possible response to those experiences, and that other responses that treat those experiences as neutral sources of useful information or as legitimate (although often very challenging) elements of human experience can and very often do produce desirable results for people, often (but not always) including a much more robust experience of recovery and an ability to function well in society without the sometimes debilitating effects of antipsychotic medications (See, for example- Longden E, Read J, Dillon J. Assessing the Impact and Effectiveness of Hearing Voices Network Self-Help Groups. Community Ment Health J. 2018 Feb;54(2):184-188. doi: 10.1007/s10597-017-0148-1. Epub 2017 Jun 21. PMID: 28638952.). Individual members are free to interpret their own experiences as they see fit. Hearing Voices Network groups are explicitly opposed to any one-size-fits-all narratives, including the narrative that schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, dissociative identity disorder, etc., do not exist. Because Hearing Voices Network groups do not actually deny the existence of diagnoses, nor do they make any explicitly anti-psychiatry claims, they do not belong in any article on mental illness denial or anti-psychiatry. They are more appropriately included in articles on Peer support, or in the List of self-help organizations. 172.254.227.210 (talk) 14:24, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Sidebar
Why the template sidebar on alternative medicine? This is a denial of a medicine, not an alternative medicine.--Hploter (talk) 21:10, 28 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Because disagreeing with anything medical is embracing pseudoscience? Yeah, I think it's a bit WP:NPOV. Talpedia (talk) 11:20, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll probably make a general mental health sidebar and use this instead. Talpedia (talk) 17:52, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

"Mental illness: psychiatry's phlogiston"
since szasz is mentioned in this artcle... maybe mention this essay "Mental illness: psychiatry's phlogiston"

this seems extremely relevant. "Mental illness is to psychiatry as phlogiston was to chemistry. Establishing chemistry as a science of the nature of matter required the recognition of the non-existence of phlogiston. Establishing psychiatry as a science of the nature of human behaviour requires the recognition of the non-existence of mental illness."

"For example, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the great English chemist, could not relinquish the phlogiston theory, even after he himself had discovered oxygen and after Lavoisier's work swept the scientific world. He continued to view oxygen as “dephlogisticated air”. In a pamphlet titled, “Considerations on the doctrine of phlogiston and the decomposition of water”, published in 1796, he referred to Lavoisier's followers as “Antiphlogistians”, and complained: “On the whole, I cannot help saying, that it appears to me not a little extraordinary, that a theory so new, and of such importance, overturning every thing that was thought to be the best established chemistry, should rest on so very narrow and precarious a foundation”"

I just thought i'd note that. I think szasz is like super correct that "psychiatric coercion is medicalized terrorism"... so i am not making this edit myself... since i am biased! lol. inner and outer peace to you. Michael Ten (talk) 02:41, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It's just part of Szasz' style. Instead of using real valid reasoning (or maybe sometimes additionally, who knows), he compared the "mental-illness or not" question with other questions such as "witchcraft or not", aligning pychiatrists with inquisitors and himself with those who doubted the existence of witchcraft. Reading him is quite tiresome because of that, he keeps harping about it. I don't think it is very relevant that he managed to find another question he could compare his own concern to (of course his own position is aligned with the side that won). He probably also compared himself to Galileo and to Semmelweis. The Galileo gambit is one usual tactic of people who have no leg to stand on - to point to some historical person who did have that, and to say "I am like that guy". Since this is all noise without empirical or rational content or any relation to the actual subject, the only reason to include it would be to emphasize the emptyness of Szasz' reasoning. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:09, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm aware I'm walking into WP:FORUM terroritory but the argument in favour of this is that understanding bias from within a field is hard, so study of similar social processes can be useful as a means of turning a mirror upon one's own society. Of course quoting an analogy does not make one true, and it might be better to try to make analysis theoretical rather than rhetorical. Medical sociology and Controversies about psychiatry address this topic. I'm pretty convinced that a whole bunch "medical knowledge" consists of asserting medical certainty when there is little to solve "social problems" (remove blame from physicians, maintian physicians self-regard, justify coercion, exculpate family, justify a desire for contempt) and at times there's actually reasonable evidence to support it. Tal pedia 15:54, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Term is not very used
Had a look on google scholar for "mental illness denial" and got 4 reviews. "denial of mental illness" at least for 68. Shall we switch to that name... given the low number of results, I'm tempted by merging this into various different articles, on the other hand I'm not sure it fits very neatly elsewhere. Tal pedia 12:04, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Although I'm actually thinking this might be a better fit in *Illness denial* (that seems to have lt more material) - so maybe this becomes part of that. Tal pedia 12:10, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

The Athlete Part
It is an odd little article and the Athlete training bit makes for it read EVEN MORE oddly. I do not think this article really needs to be free standing and there are many WP articles on MI - it is heavily covered. BeingObjective (talk) 23:08, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Society bit
I think the term - is okay being discussed - but there are many better WP articles on related subjects. The society part makes this article odd - cultural acceptance and acceptance within a sub group (Athletes) of this denial - makes this article a tad nebulous. BeingObjective (talk) 23:19, 23 October 2023 (UTC)