This month's excellent guest post is contributed by Heidi Bitsoli, a writer and editor for Sunshine Behavioral Health. We hope this original post will bring awareness to mental health challenges and the stigmatization sometimes faced by people experiencing them:
The debate as to whether mental disorders are biological diseases or whether they are merely deviations from social norms is not new. Plato takes on this question in the Phaedrus, a dialog dating back to ancient Greece.
In 2013, C.D. Herrera pointed out that philosophical discourse about mental illness started with the Greeks: “Meaningful talk about inclusion and justice has, since Plato and Aristotle, included observation and speculation which have been directed towards answering questions of what we should do when people reason differently, when they manage emotions differently, and when they resist attempts to bring them into line.”
The debate as to whether mental disorders are biological diseases or whether they are merely deviations from social norms is not new. Plato takes on this question in the Phaedrus, a dialog dating back to ancient Greece.
In 2013, C.D. Herrera pointed out that philosophical discourse about mental illness started with the Greeks: “Meaningful talk about inclusion and justice has, since Plato and Aristotle, included observation and speculation which have been directed towards answering questions of what we should do when people reason differently, when they manage emotions differently, and when they resist attempts to bring them into line.”
