What Makes a Disorder 'Mental'? A Practical Treatment of Psychiatric Disorder

Abstract:The titular question, of what makes a disorder 'mental,' has an obvious answer: mental disorders are disorders of the mind. I argue that this is not so, before proposing a positive theory of what makes a disorder 'mental,' that what makes a disorder 'mental' is its relationship to psychiatry. The overall thrust of my argument is that mental disorder is mental in name only—to have a mental disorder is not to have a disorder of the mind. Instead, mental disorder is psychiatric disorder, a class of conditions grouped together not because of anything to do with the mind, but because of their relationship to psychiatry, a concrete group of methods, practices, and institutions.