Mental health or mental illness?
As in many areas of social life, naming a reality is not a neutral gesture. Especially if this reality is difficult to assume collectively. And this is the case with the issue of mental health. From the term mental illness, which was commonly used to identify a person struggling with certain "non-physical" health difficulties, we moved, a decade ago, to the term "mental health." So much so that today we speak of mental health problems or disorders, serious and persistent or transitory, to designate a difficult human reality still tinged with beliefs, prejudices, stereotypes that lock people into even greater suffering: that of silence and rejection. The term mental health is an expression that brings hope, even though this generic term drowns different degrees of impairment in a single expression. A person suffering from a mental health disorder can, according to the promoters of this expression, take more control of their lives and become actively involved in their healing process.