Hey. I think your criticisms about the current state of knowledge are fair but... I do think that there are some clinicians and researchers who do care, very much, about these issues.

> "they" do not seem to know what causes mental illness; they do not really even know what "it" is.

That is right. We don't know a great deal. There are a lot of theories that have been developed, however. People are trying to work on this. Drug companies would like to know about the neurological mechanisms that result in psychosis and mania and depression because they would like to develop more effective drugs. Therapists would similarly like to know more about the mechanisms involved so they can provide more effective treatments. Theorists and scientists are also interested in increasing our state of knowledge. A lot of research funding goes to investigating the causes of mental illness.

> Why are medications prescribed only to suppress the symptoms?

Because at present... Those are the best (most effective) medications that we have got.

> Why do mental health professionals (by and large) seem not to wonder about the content of the hallucinations?

Because that seems to be irrelevant with respect to the current biological treatments. Psychoanalytically / dynamically inclined clinicians DO ask about the content of hallucinations and delusions and the like. Phenomenological approaches focus more on the phenomenology / content.

> So, I see a lot of mental health treatment today as aimed to cover things up rather than to reveal.

Yeah. One notion is that... The person is distressed by their delusions / hallucinations and so if the medication stops them having delusions / hallucinations then we have fixed them. Similarly if a person is distressed by their runny nose and eyes and sore throat we give them anti-biotics and watch them get better. Oftentimes... We don't need to know precisely what the infectious agent is UNLESS the medication doesn't provide some relief.

They are the concerns of others, too. You might find some solace with certain members of the anti-psychiatry movement who encourage us to understand mental disorder as something that is largely a response to a sick society... Or psychoanalytic / dynamic / phenomenological theorists who maintain that we should understand the content and listen more to patients reports of what is going on for them.