"Disease" is a borrowed term. Borrowed from physical medicine. It's only a metaphor. As is "illness." None of us have the slightest idea, as of yet, whether mental "problems" or "difficulties" really are "diseases" or "illnesses." They may well be! But no one as of now has any idea whether it's so or not. I'd be more in favor of the most general possible terms: "problem" or "difficulty." The people who began using those borrowed terms were in all good faith trying to IMPROVE the status of mental difficulties, by no means to stigmatize them.

Who cares whether it's more or less frightening to outsiders? It simply has to be respected as a real, not an assumed, difficulty. The heck with whether it's frightening! All this terminology back and forth is depressing in itself! The conduct of crazy people (yes, CRAZY people) will ALWAYS freak out bystanders! The hell with bystanders! What we need are budgetary appropriations for research, social appropriations for care and medication, and respect for the pain with which we deal every day! They wouldn't DARE do this to cancer patients! To cardiovascular illnesses! And we want to get up there with those favored disease categories, whether we're connected with diseases or not! Take care.