Chuck Ruby, Ph.D.

A recent article published by What Doctors Don't Tell You (WDDTY) demonstrates a great misunderstanding about what "causes" mental disorders. It claims that intestinal bacteria problems are a cause of depression. However, this is confusing real illness and the fake mental illnesses. See the WDDTY article here.

There are all sorts of pathological conditions of the body that mimic what are conventionally considered mental illness. For instance, low thyroid hormone levels can cause lethargy, typically confused with depression. Likewise, brain tumors can cause uncharacteristic behaviors and feelings that are diagnosed as psychosis. But these two examples, and the many others having to do with nutritional deficiencies, mold and toxin exposure, and ingestion of other chemicals, to mention just a few, have nothing to do with so-called "mental illness". They are conditions of real bodily pathology that we experience in a whole host of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional ways, just like we react to a bad cold with lethargy and disinterest.

Diagnosing a person with depression because his/her gut bacteria is out of whack it tantamount to diagnosing a person with Generalized Anxiety Disorder because she/he drank 12 cups of coffee. Both of these examples display the symptoms of real illness, not the oxymoronic "mental illness".

"Mental illness" is oxymoronic because the mind, being an abstract concept without physical substance, cannot become ill. Illness is reserved for physical things that go awry. Obviously we use the illness concept as metaphor, as in a "sick economy", or "diseased society", but we are clear these are metaphor. No one in their right mind would consider these real illness to be treated with medication or surgery. If "mental illness" was ever used solely as metaphor this way, it has long lost that metaphorical understanding. It is considered among conventional mental health professionals as really illness.

In fact, those things traditionally referred to as mental illness have to do with personal, spiritual, economic, existential, and political conundrums that we all face from time to time. They has nothing to do with real health or illness.