-This is where we fundamentally disagree. I believe from a lot of personal experience, that looking at it like a mental illness, is very very detrimental for a few reasons. A) That is the exact reason why people don't reach out. When someone is told they have a "condition" we are labeling them as sick. No one and I mean no-one will want to self label themselves a sick person. It is not like cancer. Cancer is a physical illness. Therefore, regardless if we classify or don't classify cancer as a sickness, it is in the open because of its physical symptoms. Someone coughing up blood will have no embarrassment going to the ER for a cancer screening, because they are not turning themselves into someone sick. They were already turned into someone sick. When the blood comes coughing out, regardless if they want to be called sick, they are already called sick. It was not them reaching out to make themselves sick.   By someone who has an emotional challenge, to turn themselves into a sick person with all the "I'm different" that it comes along with, won't happen to the overwhelming majority of people.2-But that only tells us why we shouldn't "call it" a mental illness. That doesn't address whether it really is a mental illness or not.  Now I'll proceed to tell you why it's not a mental illness in the first place. The whole concept of "Mental illness" is really a scam.  By a physical illness we are treating the body. Not the behaviors associated with the body. Let me give you an example. If someone has a broken foot, We dont treat his behaviors associated with a broken foot. In other words, the doctors are not focusing on healing his inability to play football, or walk with his wife or work as the manager of a store. We heal what caused his inability to play football and walk with his wife and what caused his inability to continue being a store manager, aka his broken foot. The definition of illness is,    ill·ness/ˈilnəs/Learn to pronouncenoun

1. a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind

1. Aka a disease (A) affectingthe body or mind (B ). is considered an illness.

Now let's talk about mental illness. In behavioral approaches to mental health we focus on symptoms. If you look at the DSM-5, in order for one to be diagnosed, they need to have at least "X" amount of "X" amount of symptoms.                    Here's the problem. Symptoms are the effects. So mental illnesses are diagnosed by how they are affecting you. Aka, if you have affect "A" and affect "D" and affect "G" you can be diagnosed with "Anxiety" for example.   But what about the disease? What about what's causing the symptoms? That's something that we call tranua, abuse, neglect, shame, guilt, disconnection etc. etc. etc. So saying a person "has" anxiety as if it's a "disease" is like diagnosing someone that broke their foot as "inability to play, work or walk disorder" (IPWWD). So it's not helpful, but also more importantly, it is not true.