I believe mental illnesses exist alongside physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses, but while agreeing "mental illness" is often the far-too-convenient diagnosis made by people who either cannot or will not distinguish mental illness from emotional and/or spiritual illness...and I have drawn that personal conclusion as a member of A.A. where today's AA seems to me to know so very little about emotional and spiritual illness as it should and then ends up wrongly tagging people as "mentally ill" while saying AA (only as it is today, I say) cannot help them.