Mental Illness as Psychiatric Disorder

Abstract

To the sociologist, perhaps the single most important characteristic of the psychiatric perspective is that psychiatry views mental illness as a real illness, as distinct from being a socially constructed myth. Whereas some social perspectives might argue that ``mental illness'' is a label applied by society or social groups to subsets of unusual, unappealing, or disruptive behaviors and feelings, the psychiatric perspective would argue that these behaviors and feelings are themselves the signs and symptoms of true underlying disease or disorder states. Psychiatry uses the term mental illness for a spectrum of syndromes that are classified by clusters of symptoms and behaviors considered clinically meaningful in terms of course, outcome, and response to treatment. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how psychiatry defines and organizes these syndromes and to identify the kinds of clinical features associated with the syndromes most relevant to sociological inquiry. The overall goal is to show how the psychiatric perspective of mental illness encompasses more than a single dichotomous category---indeed, even more than a series of dichotomous diagnoses---for use as outcome variables. Rather, psychiatric notions of heterogeneity along a number of clinical axes within and among psychiatric disorders offer considerable richness to a sociological understanding of the risks and outcomes of mental illness.