Patients suffering from mental disorders are often not treated on an equal basis with patients suffering from organic diseases. In Germany, for example, alcohol-dependent patients will be detoxified on a clinical ward to ensure that they survive acute alcohol withdrawal; however, medical insurances often do not cover treatment costs for a therapy for the addictive behavior that underlies the acute alcohol problem. While patients suffering from diabetes mellitus can also display personally harmful choices and, for example, consume sugar although they (...) know that this is detrimental for their health, medical insurances pay for the acute hyperglycemic shock treatment as well as for dietary and medical treatment of the .. (shrink)

The disease status of mental disorders has been hotly debated and is still highly relevant for ethical and economic considerations regarding the human rights of psychiatric patients. Here we critically discuss traditional evolutionary and degenerative concepts of mental disorders and propose instead the differentiation between independent dimensions of mental health resources on the one hand and mental disorders on the other. We suggest that impairments of a minimal set of mental functions can serve as indicators of exogenous and endogenous psychoses, (...) while other mental disorders cannot be diagnosed without a reference to setting and culture. (shrink)