Is my Bipolar Disorder a Mental Illness? Or is it a Disorder?

My Bipolar Disorder is certainly not an illness.

My genetic predisposition to Bipolar DIsorder was triggered by traumatic life events. Had I not been traumatised, the Bipolar Disorder would have not been triggered.

The reason why it cannot be an illness is because I also suffer with Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder.

If Bipolar is an "Illness", then Anxiety is an illness as well; then BPD is an illness as well; then OCD is an illness as well. How many illnesses do I have? All related to traumatic experiences? Makes little sense.

Makes little sense also because, and Scientists are aware of this fact, the brain can adjust itself, the brain is plastic meaning that if one area stops working, for whatever reason, another area can take on the work of that which was previously done by the non working area.

There is so much evidence for this. People that endure a car accident and survive, aften loosing brain matter, can recover.

But perhaps the greatest evidence that we have is the X rays of a French Civil Servant who had almost no brain given that fluid had filled the area where the brain usually is. I was reading an article titled Man With Tiny Brain Shocks Doctors. Yet the tiny amount of brain matter left, 10 per cent of a normal brain size, was enough for this man to relearn how to function. The brain is truly increadible. this French civil servant suffered with a bit of depression, but the areas of the brain that the Western world generally attributes to being associalted with depression, along with chemical and electrical networks, were simply not there. So, in this case, we cannot talk of a mental illness because the area that is supposed to get sick is not there. Or at least this man does not have it.

For these reasons, I truly do not understand why people continue to use "Mental Illness" when this is a false selection of words and can be very misleading. There is no illness, there is no virus, only a disorder. The disorder is real though, not the Illness.

One of my struggles is attempting to change this. Though many professors and academics agree with me, the term Illness is still used. Illness is not only wrong but damaging and misleading. It is simply a myth to call mental disorder illnesses. The sooner we change the sooner we can reduce the stigma aroung the illness. 🙂