I wish to say that a set of quotations around a label should not automatically be construed as some sort of insult or disbelief in an individual's hardships. I use quotations around labels all the time, in particular, the labels of "schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder". I do so out of recognition that those labels themselves can frequently slide depending on individual experiences/presenting symptoms at that time. I further do so out of recognition that is it a label and while some people find comfort in them, others find them to be extremely limiting or degrading. There's also the fact that the determination of who should be applied what label is not always a fail-proof process.

I agree that any expectation we have as a culture -- that we can take a human being, throw them into a theater of war, and not expect them to be psychologically impacted by that -- is a flawed expectation. I find it somewhat insulting to call that human distress a form of mental illness. To me, any distress associated with the harsh realities of war is a rational response to a situation of trauma. When people are exposed to brutality I anticipate seeing people emerge from those experiences as brutalized people.

I further believe that calling it a form of mental illness is a means of distancing ourselves from the reality of war's horrors. Rather than acknowledging that reality I feel we "blame the victim" by implying they are biologically flawed as opposed to psychologically wounded by conditions of their environment that their society placed them in and doesn't want to accept responsibility for.

Meantime, I would also like to remind everyone that we are responsible for our own sensitivities and our own reactions. Everyone can get triggered but I've seen triggered people go off and engage in some brutalities of their own, fueled by the assumption that they are fully entitled to do so because they have "_________".

Everyone who is participating in this forum is presumably doing so because they are considered to have some form of "mental illness". Maybe it would help to focus on the ways we are the same as opposed to the ways we might be different.