This is all fine, and I would not like to contradict any of these viewpoints of illnesses or diseases as they have been outlined. Where I find issue, though, and we touched on this briefly in class, is in the mental sickness department. We discussed depression in class, and how it is considered more of a disease than an illness, and the treatment for it is not such that you can simply "heal" it. Where, then, do mental "illnesses" fall in these categorizations of diagnoses and treatments?
I mentioned the dichotomy of the two in class, and, given the short discussion with professor Silliman, it seems that, though the text appears to classify them differently, it is in fact a false dichotomy. Separating the two to understand them historically and from an anthropological standpoint makes a lot of sense, especially when one comes to the exegesis of the bible and the attempt to define the actual and historical Jesus. How, though, are the two wed back together in current times and regarding the very real "illnesses" that people fight against today? Depression, I think, is a relatively easy subject to justify between the two of them, not because it is a simple disorder, but rather it has had the fortune of being widely studied. What of other psychological illnesses like Schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder? All of these are firmly grounded in the psyche, and yet needs must be approached from the "disease" standpoint.
I think your difficulty arises out of not quite grasping the distinction yet. A disease is a physical disorder, whereas illness is precisely the same condition, but viewed from the perspective of the sick person's EXPERIENCE of it, and its social meanings. So mental illness is not really different in kind from a broken leg -- it is presumably rooted in a physical, chemical imbalance of some sort, and doing something about it will require both that we address that balance, and that we address how the mentally ill person feels and how others respond.
ReplyDeleteI think of illnesses as how diseases are perceived by humanity. I believe diseases are the sickness in the body where as an illness is what people think about the disease and its effect on the individual. When Crossan talks about he healing, I think he exemplified the difference. Jesus was able to "heal" because he is capable of persuading the society that the sickness was no longer effective, but this was merely healing an illness. To heal a disease would take a doctor and probably described medicine.
ReplyDeleteLike you pointed out in class, I also believe depression is both an illness and a disease. My belief is that the disease causes the illness, but because it effect social life. I think the difference of depression from most diseases is the "healing" process. The most popular way to deal with depression is through a social process rather than a physical one. There is something about the mental aspect which makes depression thought of as an abstract sickness. It is referred to as mental rather than physical, implying that there is a difference depending on where in the body the disease effects.