I wonder if mental illness could simply be an explanation for those who fail, for what ever reasons, to participate in popular delusion. So much of the problem of mental illness is based on the assumption that normal is some how more adaptive and healthy than abnormal, but this assumption is absurd. On the most base level, we see that dominant social norms are destroying our very habitat, via global warming. On the individual level, social norms are causing increased mental, emotional, and physical pain. Flailing systems of meaning are rendering the masses depressed and anxious, yet we offer the mentally ill a stigma pardon by blaming it on THEIR chemical imbalances. We don’t really make the connection that chemicals, like humans, exist within the same system of nested autonomy. We don’t see the interconnectedness, or speak to loudly of it, less we lose our own social ranking. We don’t acknowledge that the chemical imbalance reflects a social reality, no, that would require things like action, empathy, and social change. Just take your meds and lets not rock the boat as it sails towards certain destruction.