The article even lists an actual diagnosis invented to call runaway slaves crazy:

In the United States, physician and noted racist Samuel A. Cartwright invented a related mental disorder called drapetomania, the urge that led slaves to run away. He claimed the only treatment was extreme whipping.

That example seems farcical, but, to this day, most homeless people are written off as crazy and therefore unhelpable due to a random and unfixable personal defect. I'm routinely told on HN that the crazy high cost of housing has nothing at all to do with homelessness.

Women have historically been labeled "hysterical" and there is a long tradition of prescribing women Valium when a divorce might have been a better prescription in some sense. Though, really, societal sexism was likely the larger issue that helped make the marriage so bad to begin with and divorce such an undesirable choice that Valium seemed to make more sense.

(Story time.) I went to a presentation one time at work about mental health. (It was part of the government's mental health awareness campaign[0].) In this presentation, the presenter mentioned bathing/lack of changing clothes as a marker for possible mental health issues.

As someone who grew up in a very poor area, where the water came from wells (which oft could dry-up) or the folk couldn't afford but to wash their clothes once a month in the local washateria (if that), I took issue with this idea.

From a privileged, lower-middle class or above perspective, sure, you could say that it's a possible indicator of mental health issues; however, if this were a normalised version of someone's life, having growing up so poor/destitute, would it really be a sign of mental health issues or would it just be a byproduct of their lower social-class life?

So, I guess I have to say that the answer to your question is, "yes": Your "norm" could be vastly different from someone else's.

[0] - https://www.mentalhealthireland.ie/

There are a few mental disorders like that, but it's important to bear in mind that most of them (major depression, mid to low functioning autism, anxiety, schizophrenia, and so on) lead to objectively reduced functioning independent of society and a lot of suffering in whoever has them. It's not something to be romanticized.

The line is drawn once it becomes dangerous for people around the person, or the person itself, or when the person is suffering from that condition (and not just "society misunderstanding him").

For instance, I have been the focus/target of a schizophrenic person whose condition was abruptly worsening at the time. He became a danger to me and my significant other (we are talking physical threats, punching walls, etc.). It escalated with him going to the police to file a complaint against me and two other parties for computer fraud which I only learned 6 months after he had gotten out of my life.

So, that's why mental disorders aren't just "behaviors that differ from the norm". I wish it were just cushy misadaptations but it's not.

They normally add in "and causes the person distress".

Usually you can spot a personality disorder objectively if the person has no continuity of any kind in her life: relationships, career, personal achievements...

In the case of wanderlust, it can be an unhealthy coping mechanism: "Something is wrong, I will ignore the problem and travel away".

I have healthy and unhealthy examples of wanderlust in my friends.

One healthy example is a couple of friends traveling together to find out where they would like to settle down and live (there is a goal, the motivation is positive).

One unhealthy example I have is a friend traveling randomly because she doesn't know what to do with her life. When I asked her about her latest travel she couldn't tell me much except "it was great". (no tangible goal, negative motivation, does not seem to enjoy traveling that much).

Psychology has it much worse. What the heck is "better?" Is being a jerk a psychological disorder? Psychologists have a lot of trouble defining diagnoses, and then they have trouble deciding if any one person matches it.

This happens with government, education, public works projects, you nave it. If your goal is to improve things, it comes with an opinion on what an improvement is.

Yes. Exactly this.

>My point being that I don't understand where you draw the line.

When the person with the norm-non-following behavior is unable integrate with wider society.

I was lucky enough to study psychology under someone with a streak of playful contempt for the unwanted self-seriousness that the field has. His definition of "mental disorder" as deviation from norms made sense on the first day, the definition at the top of the "mental disorder" wikipedia page is just a rabbit hole of using words that need to be defined clearly and specifically for the definition to mean anything.

Defining mental disorder as an inability to integrate can feel unsatisfying because it's essentializes the current norms of one's societal context. We know them to be entirely flexible over a short timescale (for definitions of "short" that include a decade) and it drives a line between those who can't adapt but by chance happen to ingrate and those who don't. But if you think about it for a while, you'll realize: what else could it be?

This is explicitly how it works for ADHD: it must be infringing on the person's life for it to be treated (and dismissed?).

But what if they can but simply don't want to function that way in society? What about people who wouldn't be able to function in a different kind of society but don't have to?

And what if society is so crazy that the crazies are the real sane ones?

Agreed – one reason I'm opposed to aborting babies suspected of having a mental disorder.

Much of our modern western society is highly individualistic and exploitative. We are encouraged to exploit as much and as often as we can to reap wealth. It's totally at odds with our nature as a social species and it's honestly not surprising to me that mental illness is on the rise all over the developed world.

What we would declare a psychotic killer, is perfectly adaptet to a humanity locked into a state of constant strife. In such a world, actually not beeing a psychotic killer is "mentally sick" as in - bad adapted to the circumstances. As with all adaptions to circumstances, one trys to keep the circumstances optimal for ones own adaption. Meaning, someone adaptet to strife, will try to keep the environment stable, preventing the return of peacefull times- where they must subsist on institutional cruelty and torturing animals. Humanity is legacy hardware.