So as much as we don't want to encourage learned helplessness it's also frustrating to hear people imply that identifying your mental illness is what's causing it or worsening it. Mental illness is not as concrete and measurable as say diabetes so it is not treated the same but their comparable.
If somebody has type 2 diabetes you don't tell them that identifying as a diabetic and them talking about the reason why they can't eat high sugar foods being because of their condition is somehow worsening their condition. We are trying to find language to describe what's already happening so that we can figure out solutions and explain what's going on to others.
I'm not sure that we are even talking about the same thing. What I want to know, based on some of the accounts of mental illness you've provided, is whether the concept of mental illness is even applicable in most cases. If diabetes is in any way commensurable with mental illness, one has to ask where is component that makes an illness mental. In severe ailments like dementia, there is a remarkable deterioration of brain matter - if there exists some reference of mental health in it, then we may as well call a delirious patient with a fever mentally ill; yet they are both changes induced by a material disorder. My problem is that labeling people as mentally ill is more of a social game than anything else, and if there truly exists something like a mental illness, it will not be cured by lying down and calling for a doctor.
Even if it's a slippery slope, if a wife killing her husband and subsequently herself after finding out about his infidelity is good enough to be a mental illness today, then the very notions of rage and grief may be good enough to call mental illnesses tomorrow. We can denounce the judgment of her action, but to say that it's a result of mental illness is an attack on humanity. Jumping off of a building in a display of faith is equally questionable, but the fact that it abounds in mental vigor is not questionable. If we can ever call someone mentally ill, it will be by their chronic passivity, not violent activity.
If actions like murder and suicide can be attributed to material phenomena, then morality is dead. It takes away that one sacred thing that it must adhere to - the human will, and the responsibility it carries. And whatever human will is, it is not just a speculation; it is a fact that placebo effect is not a mere illusion. If matter can effect a change in mind, mind can effect a change in matter. Nobody who has been depressed can tell me that after taking their dose of SSRI's, they awaken to a new world full of purpose and meaning the next day. It takes something more conscious to banish depression it at its core. What is mental in any illness is its philosophy. If there is a sudden influx of depression cases in 21st century, it's not because Western brains have gratuitously threw their chemistry into disarray; it's because Western societies threw themselves into a spiritual disarray.
I understand that propagation of mental health and its corollaries is intended to help people. But if all it takes to cast a shadow of mental illness over someone is that they don't act correspondingly to some vague, poorly calibrated notion of what it means to be mentally healthy, then everybody needs help everywhere, all the time. This may as well be true, but we need not to label it under new scientific doctrines and treat it in a hospital when there already is a doctrine that has dealt with this eons ago - it's called original sin.
In case it isn't clear, here's a disclaimer: I am not saying that health institutions should stop providing material treatment. I am saying that if we ever declare mental health as something materially determined, as something that can be briefly observed by a physician so he can say "yes, clearly your mind is ill", we are doomed. Because health of the mind can never be empirically or logically proven; if anything, it's proven by a hefty dose of irrationality.
