I laughed when I saw "Congress." I agree, there is a particular form of incompetence at work there, but not the kind we are discussing. I think we can agree that while congressmen may be greedy and corrupt, they are not incapable of knowing right from wrong. In fact, that's the problem: they know better.

"Mental illness" is a metaphor that was used around the turn of the century to help get people imprisoned in asylums the status of "patients", which was an infinite improvement over how they were considered and treated before this change of thinking. The problem is, we have literalized the metaphor and now are busy searching for the "physical causes" of metaphorical diseases. "Mental illness" is not a disease like diabetes or polio or cancer, all of which have very specific, quantifyable physical pathology. It is a description we use for, as you point out, the decision to engage in undesirable or irritating behaviors. In the cases, such as alzeimer's disease, where there is a defined physical condition causing the odd behavior, we don't speak of "mental illness" we talk about the brain disease alzeimer's. "Mental illness" is a term reserved for strange or undesirable behavior with no known physical cause. Talking about the correlation of moods with certain neurotransmitters is very different from establishing a causal relationship.

My thinking on this issue has changed dramatically since reading Thomas Szasz' work. I strongly recommend him. He is hated and criticized by the medical pschyological establishment, but usually by people who have never read his work and they admit it. His writing is incredibly precise and rational and he takes grave exception to the conventional wisdom of "mental illness". In particular, his books "Schizophrenia" and "The Myth of Mental Illness" are addressed to these points in particular.

Whenever we call someone "mentally ill" we deny them the status of being responsible moral agents. We do this to deprive them of their freedom because they are using it in a way we find distasteful. As long as they don't involve others against their will, I think we could use a little more tolerance.

Jim