Original SDMB thread Is manic-depression a disease to be cured?
I just met with a group of psychiatric inmates' liberation / "consumers-survivors-expatients" movement people and we talked about public perception of us and public education and how we wish to be perceived.
Is it a "disease"? Some of us do believe there is a difference and that at least under some circumstances this difference is the reason we have received psychiatric diagnoses, although we don't tend to attach much credibility to the medical model of mental illness.
But a difference only becomes a disability (let alone a disease) when we, on an individual basis, determine that we find that difference disabling -- and not all of us do.
And the bottom line is this: no coercion. No forced treatment. We have
the right to be untreated uncured crazy people. (As with noncrazy people,
nondiagnosed people, etc., we are subject to laws that govern behavior and
if we violate them we can be charged and arrested like anyone else). And
it is our right to choose to remain untreated and uncured that we are fighting
for.
See my next post on this same thread