Like cancer, diabetes and heart disease, mental illness can be chronic, debilitating or fatal. Even so, most health insurance plans don't offer equal coverage for mental disorders. Compelling scientific evidence shows that mental illness is based in biology. Hallucinations in people with schizophrenia are allayed by medicines. Lithium tablets tame the terrifying emotional ups and downs afflicting victims of manic depression.
Brain scans show abnormal biochemistry in people who are depressed.
Based on biomedical research, there is absolutely no justification for separating out mental disorders from other serious brain disorders. They are brain diseases just as a stroke or a brain tumor is a brain disease. Yet when it comes to mental illness, society has not caught up to science. There's still a lot of misunderstanding. About half the folks out there think that mental illnesses are problems that have to do with character and self-discipline.