What is mental illness?

Blessing in a strange way....

I read great news about the media and mental illness today! There is now a section on how the media should use mental illness posted in the medias bible-AP Stylebook.

The now are addressing how the term mental illness is used and they need reliable sources to say he/she has/had a mental illness and if the mental illness is not relevant to the topic it should not be in the story. No more anonymous or vague allusions can be used as a source, and the terms must be specific. Now if the media follows though I will be grateful.

I have honestly never seen someone say 'I am (insert diisorder)' in my life. Not sure where the idea people view themselves as their illness comes from or what exactly that means....but I hear it a lot. And I wonder who all these people claiming to be their illness are.

Learned helplessness can be a part of mental illness and/or result of it...its certainly not healthy. And unlearning it, well that is difficult when its how you developed as a child.......so I'd say in that case the illness and learned helplessness could potentially kill as both probably contribute to things like suicidal feelings and/or self destructive behavior and mental illness can also make people more vulnerable to some health problems.

Not sure how it wouldn't at all be the illness and just learned helplessness alone as I cannot really imagine an instance where one would have learned helplessness without a mental illness since someone with a healthy mental state wouldn't have that issue.