I prefer the old school wirchowian/szaszian approach of defining disease as “absence of physical lesion/pathology”. The strategic redefinition of disease to include human behavior and misbehavior creates more problems than it solves.
Most things have pluses and minuses no? Autism plus high IQ is probably responsible for most material advances throughout history (Isaac Newton never got laid), but is pretty unpleasant unless you're one of the few who get rich.
I'd overall argue the balance of anxiety and depression depends on the level of ambient threat. Some level of fear is adaptive--if you're not afraid of a tiger you get eaten, and if you're not afraid of getting fired you lose your job. Now chronic anxiety and depression are very unpleasant for the individual (even if they sometimes produce great art), but are responses to frequent low-level threats distinct from the less frequent high-level threats our ancestors faced.
It's kinda like old-school D&D where the races had ability score adjustments. Elves had +1 DEX, -1 CON -- great for someone in the back row, not so great for a front-line fighter. Halflings had -1 STR, +1 DEX --bad for a fighter, great for a thief. Liberals and conservatives are good at different kinds of things.
I prefer the old school wirchowian/szaszian approach of defining disease as “absence of physical lesion/pathology”. The strategic redefinition of disease to include human behavior and misbehavior creates more problems than it solves.
Most things have pluses and minuses no? Autism plus high IQ is probably responsible for most material advances throughout history (Isaac Newton never got laid), but is pretty unpleasant unless you're one of the few who get rich.
I'd overall argue the balance of anxiety and depression depends on the level of ambient threat. Some level of fear is adaptive--if you're not afraid of a tiger you get eaten, and if you're not afraid of getting fired you lose your job. Now chronic anxiety and depression are very unpleasant for the individual (even if they sometimes produce great art), but are responses to frequent low-level threats distinct from the less frequent high-level threats our ancestors faced.
It's kinda like old-school D&D where the races had ability score adjustments. Elves had +1 DEX, -1 CON -- great for someone in the back row, not so great for a front-line fighter. Halflings had -1 STR, +1 DEX --bad for a fighter, great for a thief. Liberals and conservatives are good at different kinds of things.