Deficient definitions of mental illness

DSM is ultimately a poor simplification of the highly complex debates that purport to explain our nature, from psychoanalysis' insistence on early childhood experience and its interaction with our innate instinctual drives, to biological determinists who view mental illness through the lens of neurotransmitters and behaviourists who emphasise unhelpful thoughts as the originator of pathological actions.

But mental illness exists and its place in an industrialised society is more central than ever. It has infact become a synonym for human distress more generally and its web can only grow as group identities based on clan, ethnicity and religion gradually attenuate and anger, hope and despair are increasingly privatised.

Infact, in December 2012 an international, multi-centre trial published in the prestigious Lancet journal found that mental illness has officially replaced back pain as the world's most common cause of disability.

In spite of its appropriate criticism, DSM and its classification of mental illness is much like democracy, as espoused by Winston Churchill. It is the worst system, except for all the others that have been tried.