Well I can think of at least one counterexample: myself. I suffer from a moderate case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have paced back and forth, obsessively checking that the sink in my bathroom is truly off, feeling my anxiety continuing to rise despite obvious visual confirmation. I once ripped the door handle off the front door of my parents' house because I had been strenuously pulling on it, neurotically ruminating on the idea that maybe, just maybe, the door wasn't completely closed.

I suffer from mental illness, and it isn't because my behaviors have a "stigma." It's because my behaviors are illogical and cause me a non-trivial amount of distress. So if you're going to rant on this forum about how mental illness is some socially-constructed tool of oppression, how about you go fuck yourself?

Thanks.

I am unable to comprehend your lack of understanding. He was mentally ill. He was treated for it. He operated within society in a fashion that does not comply with the stigma of mental illness (no murdering people, no sociopath manipulation). We need to remove this stigma (that all mentally ill are dangerous psycopaths). This will help those who are mentally ill find treatment.

I think perhaps you do not believe that depression is a mental illness. Perhaps you also believe that drugs and hormones can not affect mood, that heroin and alcohol have no affect on the body. Or perhaps you believe that there are absolutely no circumstances in which a human can grow to adulthood without exactly normal sensitivity to mood affecting drugs and hormones. Like how we all evolve slightly different nose shapes and patterns of hair growth, but all the organs in the whole body act with perfect regularity with drugs with no variation at all.

I don't know, as someone whose 8 year relationship ended with a partner who never accepted depression wasn't something I can control. To me its like not believing that lung cancer exists or something. We have evidence, diagnosis and treatment for it. Depression is hardly a made-up condition.