Annapurna1 said:

my own pet theory is that psychiatric illnesses fall into two(2) broad categories ..those that are caused by an agent that physically attacks the brain tissue.. and those which have been invented as an excuse to make money for private therapists..and/or to incarcerate and experiment on ppl that dont meet certain social criteria...

apart from those..the "abnormal" behaviours that are so prevalent are simply due to the fact that the human brain did not evolve to function efficiently in a calvinist society...

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Noteworthy said:

Anyone? Psychiatric illness is a pretty significant topic id say. But the substance is behavior. Physiological tests occur after the person has died.

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Your last sentence is confusing. Physiological tests are performed all the time to determine potential, physical causes for behavior, before a person is dead. MRI's, for example. A lot of psychical diseases have documented effects on behavior and these tests are all performed before a person has died.

Anyways, yes, all psychiatric disorders are distinctions regarding behavior. The conceptions of these disorders are created and categorized accordingly to how they relate to behavior in society in general. Its a classification that is put in a basis of what behaviors are more common and which behaviors are more "functional" in societal terms, parameters as they appear to manifest in a society at a given point in time.
I think that these classifications can be useful enough in therapy, especially when they are used as a broad guiding tool for diagnostic purposes. They might help provide a background understanding of what a client can be going through, which might help with the actual process of discovering and learning from the client about the specific nature of their experiences, sentiments, and thought processes.

For the most part I strongly disagree with what seems to be a common psychiatric approach of actually divulging these diagnostic conclusions to the client, and its hard to conceive of how efficacious doing so is in terms of the actual therapeutic process, with the consideration that any potential gains from such a divulgence likely pale in comparison to more effective approaches.
Of course, I also disagree with most of the psychiatric approach to treating behavior in general, with the exception of using chemical catalysts in certain psychological approaches to conducting therapy, as temporary tools used in providing novel experiences to help provide new perspective and to resolve latent emotional content.

Noteworthy said:

There Are often claims that psychiatric illness is rife in our society, or that psychiatric illness does not exist at all.

Often people are misdiagnosed. But also there exist people with clear brain difficiencies that prevent them from behaving acceptably.

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Quote:

here's also family history, genetics, hormone levels.

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