Psychiatric Disabilities

When people claim they themself have a psychiatric disability they are medicalizing their own misery, problems in living, lack of social skills, and so forth. When people do this and receive financial help from the government because of a psychiatric disability, then they are medicalizing their misery and receiving help because that (medicalization) is one the few ways the government will financially help people that are so miserable they feel they cannot function as an employee or business owner. People can be extremely miserable and that misery can be an obstacle to being a good employee or business owner. Do they actually have a medical disability? It’s not really medical because psychiatric disorders are not actually authentic medical disorders. Do they actually have a disability? That depends how disability is defined. I am all for helping people who are so miserable that they feel they can’t work as an employee or run a successful business. I even support universal basic income. The status quo is not good because medicalization of problems in living has unintended consequences. For example there is good reason to believe that psychiatric drugs may actually be increasing rates of psychiatric disability over the long term. The book Anatomy of an Epidemic explores this idea in great detail. People should be able to receive help to address misery, problems in living, and so forth without having to go through the dehumanizing experience of having all their personal problems and distress medicalized.