Excuse me?

[conuly]

But playtime isn't always this carefree, because Taylor is one of the thousands of children across America who struggle with mental illnesses. Taylor has been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder, hyperactivity and Asperger syndrome, a form of autism.

None of these things are classified as mental illnesses. That's because they aren't illnesses, of any sort, least of all the "mental" kind, which tends to imply insanity.

Comments

[georgiapeachy.livejournal.com]

This error has serious consequences, Szasz argues: "The classification of (mis)behavior as illness provides an ideological justification for state-sponsored social control." As he put it in his 1990 book The Untamed Tongue, "What people nowadays call mental illness, especially in a legal context, is not a fact, but a strategy; not a condition, but a policy; in short it is not a disease that the alleged patient has, but a decision which those who call him mentally ill make about how to act toward him, whether he likes it or not."
I agree, I have all was diagnosed as ADHD by my school. In my case the school wanted to intervene by "encouraging" medicine to treat the "illness" and "encouraging" placement in special ed. I was not suicidal or violent, simply annoying (talking during class, chasing people during recess, etc.) and "weird" (avoiding eye contact, becoming obessesed with things). In my opinion medicine should be a last resort, when I was on Ritalin the side effects were awful and I always felt drugged, it was also difficult to quit. Now that I'm off it I might still be "weird" or "annoying", but that's not a disease in my opinion. My parents also switched schools when the original school wanted to place me in special ed, ironically the new school placed me in gifted. So many famous inventors and scientists would be diagnosed with a "mental illness" if they were placed in school today, when really their only "illness" is being different.