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What is the difference between insanity and being mentally ill?

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I have a question that I have been debating with my brother for a while.
What is the difference between insanity(being insane) and being mentally ill? Or is it the same thing?

@MITech,

No difference. Semantics.

@MITech,

Insanity is not a scientific term. It is colloquial.

@Icon,

I think there is a little more to it. While insanity is a colloquial term I wonder what it is then you'd classify "generally" an insane person to be.

Is it amoralism, loss of free will, loss of rational thought.... what is it?

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

I think there is a little more to it. While insanity is a colloquial term I wonder what it is then you'd classify "generally" an insane person to be.

Is it amoralism, loss of free will, loss of rational thought.... what is it?

Hello My friend,
What do you think?
Considering, in my opinion, depression is a mental illness if you consider what would ensue without the medication, there are a lot of insane people running around if Stompermc's assessment is accurate. The insanity is still there, it's just been short circuited. IMO. The problem is the stigma we attach to the two words: Insanity and Mental Illness. Insanity, it could be assumed, is a "mental illness" we have not been able to short circuit. One of these days even the medications will not work. So, do you think it is time to devote a little effort to determine what it is about this reality we have created that is driving people "nuts"? Just a thought. :perplexed:
William

@William,

Yes, excellent... for example; can capitalism sustainably allow the collective moral responsibility of individuals to be accounted for? (if this is possible in the first place)

@Holiday20310401,

Whats the difference between George Bush and insanity .....ok I think I'm getting it now.
.....there isn't any difference.

:a-ok:
Just a joke.

@MITech,

Yah George Bush might as well be considered insane for what he's done.Lol

In my opinion you can be mentally ill but not be insane.You can bne schizophrenic and hear voices for example and not be considered insane. An insane person would for example if they heard a voice telling them to kill someone and that person did kill someone than they would be considered insane.

@MITech,

I think that insanity is a branch of mental illness. I am about as far from the title of expert as you can get, but it seems logical that it goes (example) mentally ill, insane, sociopathic, etc.

@MITech,

'Insanity/sanity' is a legal term relating to one's ability to distinguish 'right' from 'wrong' and one's ability to effectively participate in one's defence. Roughly.

'Mental illness' is a term invented by the fine people who make too much money selling you drugs and banana oil to help the 'mental illness' notion that they first sold you.
'Mental illness' is also defined by the concensus of the majority, like 'normal'... "Anyone not like us" could be considered a definition (as is so often the case)...

@MITech,

political correctness....

(though in this case I think it was used well)

@MITech,

Yes, the term 'insanity' is a legal term.

But seeing as though the legal fraternity thinks marriage between man and man is 'sane', I have realized that 'insanity', 'mental illness' and 'legal' are synonyms for
'faithless', 'stoopid', 'godless', 'base', 'backward' and more specifically .... 'hebephrenic'.

@MITech,

I can answer this question with some authority. As a life long sufferer of manic depression I am most certainly not insane and the use of the term is a bad negation of very ill people.

But at times I was insane or psychotic during extremely high manic spells.Real insanity is simply beyond description in the pain , fear and helplessness it brings to the sufferer (and family of course).

And nameless is wrong , some people are seriously mentally ill and if it were not for modern medication I would long be dead

I am balanced now

A great many remarkable people have suffered from manic depression and it is sometimes called The Brilliant Madness

What other term can the medical profession use for this?

Alan

@MITech,

MITech wrote:

I have a question that I have been debating with my brother for a while.
What is the difference between insanity(being insane) and being mentally ill? Or is it the same thing?

A: usually a job
B: sometimes a marriage
C: always children

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall wrote:

I can answer this question with some authority. As a life long sufferer of manic depression I am most certainly not insane and the use of the term is a bad negation of very ill people.

But at times I was insane or psychotic during extremely high manic spells.Real insanity is simply beyond description in the pain , fear and helplessness it brings to the sufferer (and family of course).

And nameless is wrong , some people are seriously mentally ill and if it were not for modern medication I would long be dead

I am balanced now

A great many remarkable people have suffered from manic depression and it is sometimes called The Brilliant Madness

What other term can the medical profession use for this?

Alan

I have never known anyone who did not burn through life like they were supposed to who did not do so between extremes, and I am no exception... The desire to know everything, do everything and everybody who is do-able, and that is a joke, not a fact, is what makes any revelation possible... Was it the Red Queen that said to get anywhere you have to run twice as fast??? To learn enough is to keep up... To be driven is to go twice as fast, and invariably it will involve great insight, great dreams, great failures, and great pain...I hope I am manic... It would certainly explain the highs and lows I have known...I am probably only obsessed..

@Fido,

Fido,

Quote:

I have never known anyone who did not burn through life like they were supposed to who did not do so between extremes, and I am no exception... The desire to know everything, do everything and everybody who is do-able, and that is a joke, not a fact, is what makes any revelation possible... Was it the Red Queen that said to get anywhere you have to run twice as fast??? To learn enough is to keep up... To be driven is to go twice as fast, and invariably it will involve great insight, great dreams, great failures, and great pain...I hope I am manic... It would certainly explain the highs and lows I have known...I am probably only obsessed..

Well if you are quoting your own reality it would appear that you might be a hypo-manic. Very many great people have been hypo manics and this stood them in great stead.

Of course I cannot diagnose you.

Nearly all highly creative people are mild bi polars (hypo manics) It is when the depressed stage of the manic stage become extreme , as in my case that it become crippling and very destructive

Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Vincent van Gogh, Micheal Angelo, Theodor Roosevelt are just a few.

I will come back with a more comprehensive list later.

Nice communicating with you

Alan

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall wrote:

Fido,

Well if you are quoting your own reality it would appear that you might be a hypo-manic. Very many great people have been hypo manics and this stood them in great stead.

Of course I cannot diagnose you.

Nearly all highly creative people are mild bi polars (hypo manics) It is when the depressed stage of the manic stage become extreme , as in my case that it become crippling and very destructive

Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Vincent van Gogh, Micheal Angelo, Theodor Roosevelt are just a few.

I will come back with a more comprehensive list later.

Nice communicating with you

Alan

Thank you really, but I don't really need a complete list... I have seen it often, and the difficulty with relationships for driven people... We talk about strong personalities driving history forward; but if mental illness, essentially unhappiness at all the injustice of life, were not so very common, the strong personalities would beat themselves to death on a wall of resistence... The world is going to change now, because it must, and now is a good time to be a strong personality, driven to change, everything, anything to make life what it should be, and must be...Best to ya

@MITech,

you can have a psychological disorder and not be insane, like you can have OCD and not be insane. But if you are insane youre definitely mentally ill

@DRgenius21,

Why split hairs... It's the difference between a low tire and a thrown rod...

@MITech,

Fido and DRgenius21

Yes why avoid the term mentally ill, it is as good as any to describe psychiatric disorders.

Use a term like brain function disorder might even give a worse connotation .

Mad is a good term for the people who know they are mad will tell you that. These people cannot be helped my medication or any other psychiatric approach and must be confined to an institution for the rest of their lives

Happily ever few mentally ill people reach this critical degree of psychoses , during the early part of the last century huge lunatic asylums were full of supposed insane.

They were nearly emptied with he event of antipsychotic medications

Alan

You guys must learn to indicate to whom your posts are addressed to, dont leave it just hanging in the void

This gives me the impression of a cold clinical forum (I only mean this in a friendly way as I am a lovable old gritter)

Regards

Alan

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