Facts, not Myths
Mental illness refers to a group of disorders causing severe disturbances in thinking, feeling, and relating. They result in a substantially diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. Mental illnesses can affect persons of any age—children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly—and they can occur in any family. Several million people in the U.S. suffer from a serious, long term mental illness. The cost to society is high due to lost productivity and treatment expense.
Mental illness is not the same as mental retardation. The mentally retarded have a diminished intellectual capacity usually present since birth. Those with mental illnesses are usually of normal intelligence although they may have difficulty performing at a normal level due to their illness.
A mental illness is not caused by bad parenting and is not a character weakness or flaw. These illnesses are due to biochemical disturbances in the brain—they are neurobiological disorders