What do you think is mental illness?!

Personally, I think that if you look hard enough you can classify anyone with a mental illness. Think about it! We humans run around doing the same day after day, thinking that our individual lives are the center of the universe. We are all hopeless narcissists. That being said, there are some traits that make a person more mentally ill then most other people. But there are tons of classes of mental illness. There's depression (basically chronic sadness), bipolar (severe mood swings), sociopath (lack of a distinction between right and wrong), schizophrenia (characterized by audio or visual hallucinations), OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), ADD/ADHD (attention problems and hyperactivity), borderline personality disorder (I can't really explain this one, except that it's very hard to handle) and many, many, many more (including eating disorders such as anorexia). Basically though mental illness is a disease of the mind, characterized usually by a chemical imbalance of some sort (there's too much of a chemical or hormone or not enough of one). Hope that helps!

I spent some time in the psych ward at a hospital

your kidding right? mental illness covers every mental disorder there is. there isn't really any behaviors that suit all of them. it would be like asking what disease is and wanting a list of symptoms that they all have.

Mental illness is not normal, so they say. But then back in the day, it was normal to believe that the world was flat, so go figure.