After wrestling with this linguistic problem for quite some time, the best term I’ve come up with this far is “mental injury”. I strongly prefer it to “illness” because illness connotes a disease of the flesh, and there is no proof that any of the things we typically call mental illness (with a few notable exceptions like alzheimer’s and possibly seizures) are actually based in the body.
In contrast, most of the common “mental illnesses” can be linked to specific forms of psychological trauma or injury. For example, depression and anxiety being caused by emotional abuse. Or PTSD resulting from a traumatic event.
The other term that comes to mind is “fracture” or “break”. Like, I fractured my femur when I was in college. I got surgery, the femur healed. My femur didn’t get an “illness” and I certainly don’t feel any stigma or shame around the experience, other than regretting skiing way too fast.
It would be cool to say the same about the depression I experienced.
“What happened to you?”
“Oh, I fractured my mind after a really bad relationship with an emotionally abusive ex. Yeah, my mind broke pretty good, but thankfully it was a pretty clean break, I got it set right and after a few years of psychoanalysis and some quality entheogens it’s as good as new.”
It’s time to ditch the illness/disease model for mental illness and use terms like injury/fracture/break that both accurately describe the situation and clearly indicate that the situation can be remedied. The idea of chronic and untreatable mental illness is a self fulfilling prophecy and does far more harm than good.