That presents another interesting point. One that really suggests how point of view greatly impacts concepts of mental disorders.
At the core of pathology is the notion that there is a deviation from 'normal' function. Which is to say by definition a pathological condition must present dysfunction to some degree.
Who gets to define dysfunction? The person whose path to full expression of their potential is blocked by a disorder, or therapists who represent the will of society to recognize an individual's path as deviant?
This isn't really a triviality. Since the beginning of the Cold War and the first edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual the APA has been pretty sensitive to how authoritarian regimes around the world have identified political/social deviance as mental illness and thereby wrongly institutionalized political deviants.
And it may go beyond the issue of deviants into other social issues...
Even if we pull ourselves into the narrow point of view that mental disorder isn't merely deviance, but rather patterns of dysfunctional cognition, emotion, and/or behavior, we are left to wonder what factor produces the 'lesion' that classical pathology tells us should be at the core of a disorder/disease.
That's what this news article explores. In the US poplar belief is that mental disorders arise from "chemical imbalances" in the brain. That's 50 year old idea that paved the way for the use of pharmaceuticals in mental illness. We in the US are a nation of people who have great faith in the magic bullets, be they produced by pharma or alternative medicine advocates.
We exist in a time when research in molecular biology, and molecular genetics in particular, are seen as the cutting edge of research. Research money flows to what is seen as that cutting edge.
Our president doesn't want American institutions to see mental illness as a character issue but as a consequence of the brain. And has directed Federal research money in mental health to focus on the biology of the brain.
In the world of biology, both genetics and brain structure and function are "skins in" approaches. That focus would see mental illness as the result of processes inside of an afflicted person's skin.
In the world of biology, environmental/ecological forces are 'skins out'. This article says relationships of individuals with factors in their environment is where we should look for features that bring about psychological dysfunction.
In the US the Obama administrations policy approach has to a very large extent closed the door on the flow of research money to people considering those environmental factors. On the level of social consideration, it's quite possible to wonder if keeping the focus on -skins in- causes isn't a mechanism to avoid making social changes and leaving the population by and large feeling good about their lack of contribution to the mental disorders of others.
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