The Concept of Mental Disorders

The revision of pivotal handbooks for the diagnosis and classification of mental disorders stimulated lively discussions on how long a person may grieve after the death of a close relative without being diagnosed with clinical depression.

In this debate, the patients’ entitlement to being treated and their fear of pathologisation and patronisation has to be taken into account by a professional medical community that determine what constitutes the boundaries of mental maladies. Considering the diversity of human beings and their cultural practices, the physician and philosopher Andreas Heinz argues for a philosophically informed definition of disease, illness and sickness that defines mental maladies as a disruption of mental functions that are relevant for survival and cause either suffering or severely impair social participation and inclusion of the afflicted person.

»The result is an emphatic recognition of psychological suffering, but also a case against the advance of pathologisation – and an impressive defense of the plurality of the way humans exist in this world.« Philosophie Magazin

»Andreas Heinz’s approach is impressive in its recognition of psychological afflictions and the logical assignment of the status ‘disease’ on the one hand, and in the rejection of the pathologisation of humans (and the ›normal‹) and the consequent defense of the plurality of the way humans exist in this world on the other.« Deutsches Ärzteblatt