mental disorders are very real. It amazes me that people can be so ignorant as to claim they are not. Yes, there are people who attempt to fake it, just like there are people who fake being all manner of things for personal gain. However, it is rare when claiming a mental disorder will benefit you. Having it documented that you are mentally ill is a disadvantage in damn near every scenario. Try going to court against an opponent that can document that you are diagnosed with a mental disorder and see if that helps in your favor. It certainly does not benefit a person financially. If they are declared unable to work because of the mental disorder, that leads to hardship since the amount of money given is not enough for most people to live comfortably off of. Everyone i know on disability is screwed and struggles to pay the most basic of bills.

Mental disorders are the real deal, and they can be debilitating to your life if they aren't treated.

Not to say malingering doesn't happen, but that there are a lot more people who suffer genuinely.

Mental illnesses are very real and can be extremely debilitating.

I HAVE A MENTAL PROBLEM! I actually do have ADHD and what sucks ass total ASS...is the fact that I have more difficulty learning shit...hands on demonstrations are almost always more efficient...but I cant always get that...so reading material over and over doesn't always work because I have questions and IF THERES NO ONE TO ASK FOR HELP THEN WHAT THE HELL AM I TO DO? YA DIG?!

ok let me stand on my soap box for a minute. They are very real and in my opinion are more of a threat then people realize. It has always been a part of society but is more prominant now then ever. Until recently say in the last 40-50 years mental illness was handled in extreme ways. Mentally ill people were were kept away from society. Whether they were kept away by the family hidden from the public, or banashed from towns or villages, locked away in asylums or in extreme cases killed as demons or witches. Today we have a very different but serious problem. Today we medicate them and turn them loose in society. This means that with every generation more and more mental illness is being bred into the population. Lots of mental illness' are recessive and not all mental illness can be treated with medication. Even the ones that can are getting bred deeper and deeper into our genetics and at some point will not be treatable. For those that can there is no guarantee that the people will take there medication. The way I see it it is a huge threat to the human race. Im not saying that mentally ill people should be locked away or killed I am just stating the facts as I see them.

I think mental disorders do exsist. Some can be treated but not be cured. I have a family member with a mental disorder which, while treatable, will never "cure" her. I also believe many claim mental disorder so they do not have to suffer the consequences of their actions.

I believe that mental disorders are way overdiagnosed. Sometimes being sad, just means being sad, and being shy just means being shy. 90% of doctors are more than willing to label sad as depression and shy as social anxiety disorder.

I think that the mental disorders are very real, though the majority of them are probably behavioral or neurotic problems (and it's a modern wonder we're not all completely off the wall neurotics btw). Solutions to these problems are not as advanced as many might like to think. For example, there probably really is a problem with ADD and mild cases of autism because people and kids today are bombarded with so much busy information, and language is less a function in our social lives than it used to be, but shelling out ritalin like it's a miracle cure and singling out creative kids from the rest of their peers is not going to get to the bottom of the problem or help us learn how to deal with it without drugs or standardized crutches. Some disorders are overdiagnosed or advertized too much i think too. Never underestimate the power of suggestion. Or lazyness. thanks for the Question

Real? It depends on the person. Some are diagnosed because they don't act or behave the way the shrinks think they should, yet if those shrinks lived their lives whose to say they would behave differently.

many mental disorders are very real... BUT a great many are not!, they are things that have been made up by shrinks and given fancy names and vulnerable people fall for it