I've actually been told something similar by a family member who is very religious and refuses to believe that I could just be sick. People back in the day didn't understand mental illnesses and blamed them on the devil or other supernatural beings, and often tried to blame the sick person for their illness.

A good example of the kind of crap that kind of thinking can lead to is very well portrayed in "The Crucible," the play about the Salem witch trials. Unfortunately many people continue believing stuff like that, and stigma in society that portrays mentally ill folks as monsters just adds to it. Heck, look at the article about "psychopaths and sociopaths " on the front page of this site. Doesn't that make folks with ASPD look like demonic creatures? (I complained about that article btw)

So here's the deal.

Mental illness is never your fault. Never. Not EVER. And anybody who tries to blame you for being ill, is one day going to have to learn some hard lessons about compassion, because nobody gets away with that kind of judgmental thinking forever.

Mental illness is just an illness like any other.