The drowning person panics and drags you under.

The shitty person pushes you overboard.

So you are saying a mental illness is where you dont intend to cause harm? That would mean serial killers have perfect mental health.

They can be related but don't have to be.

Shitty people sometimes become quite pleasant as dementia progresses. Some really nice people become completely nasty. Sometimes there is no change.

I suppose the answer to that depends on how meta you want go get, so to speak. But at its most basic, some people are just assholes without being irrational, stressed out, etc. Though you could easily argue they weren't raised right and are being stupid, basically.

I'd argue that all negative behavioral issues are mental illnesses. One way to classify it would be biological mental illnesses and learned mental illnesses. For example autism being a biological one and PTSD being a leaned mental illness.

Any time you have multiple people interacting, you will have some friction, even in a hypothetical situation where all involved parties have perfect mental health. Many times, behaviors are classified as "negative" based on a judgemental third party perspective.

I raised two special needs sons. They are okay in part because I wondered why they did things. I was curious about the first person perspective. I was interested in finding out "What's their motivation?"

So I think this is a much more complicated thing than you are making it out to be. People have a relationship to themselves. They have a relationship to their environment. They have a relationship to other specific individuals and to a larger society.

Mental health discussions often posit that you are mentally healthy if and only if you get along smoothly with other people. They often don't wonder at those other elements and they don't question the possibility that maybe it is the other people who are all messed up, not you.

I think this is a vastly complicated topic. It is both broad and deep. It touches on psychology, sociology and philosophy.

And I don't know that HN is really a suitable place to try to dig into it in a meaty way, frankly.

> I'd argue that all negative behavioral issues are mental illnesses.

Who gets to decide what is a "negative" behavioral issue?

I assure you that the computer types will be among the first to be medicated to to take the edge off their "negative" behavioral issues.

I tend to agree with this argument. And I think it's about time to start treating maladapted social behaviors as broken minds.

At least in my girlfriend's case, she seemed to feel regret after the maniac episode is over.

That's dependant on the mental illness. What if your illness is you just dont care about anyone.