bachkalb replied to your post “For the Purely Biological Approach to Psychopathology”
i like this approach! its very de-stigmatizing, would focus on concrete improval of life, and - if brains really work this way - would remove a lot of frustrations i have with the current system.
Yesss - okay, I’m hella glad you said that, because de-stigmatization is actually a large (and helpful) part of the reason why medicalization of psychopathology is very popular right now.
Historically (and, let’s be real, often in modern times), mental disorder has often been treated as something that is the sufferer’s fault, whether it be as a moral failure or one of bad self-control, to the result of piling on guilt and shame for people’s disorders onto those already suffering from them - aka, general net increase in suffering. The biological approach to mental disorder sort of takes that out of people’s hands - like, if it’s a physiological issue, that’s not something you can morally blame someone for having the same way you can’t demonize someone for having a cold.
Of course, this can lead to other issues where people also absolve themselves of responsibility for their awful behavior (see: the BPD community’s frequent treatment of their FPs), but I think that that’s, like... not necessarily inherent to the biological approach so much as it is to people looking for excuses to behave badly. Like, you can use a mental disorder as an excuse for behaving harmfully in a similar way to how you can use being a loving parent for behaving abusively towards your children.
