Stories about psycho"therapy" and "mental health."

My chosen profession has been in the so-called mental health field but all that was ever discussed by those in my profession were so called mental illnesses which later in my career were redefined as mental disorders. I have long argued, along with Thomas Szasz and numerous others, that mental illnesses are metaphorical in nature and are rarely, if ever, defined in terms of real medical problems. Therefore the terms mental illness and disorders are in reality negative moral judgments of unwanted, poorly understood patterns of how individuals think, act, express emotion or otherwise adapt to the total circumstances of their lives. Mental illnesses are adaptations unwanted and deemed inferior and harmful by the individuals themselves or by families, friends or society at large. How then might we define mental health? I suggest that actually we see the so-called mentally healthy as individuals whose adaptations to life are wanted, accepted, perhaps admired and therefore represent positive moral judgments in their own eyes and the eyes of those with whom they interact. Any individual might be simultaneously judged to be mentally ill or healthy by themselves, family members or the society in which they are embedded. I will discuss the endless difficulties of my being a professional called on to help individuals morally judged to be mentally ill or disordered especially after I decided that my role was not only "reduce or eliminate their illnesses" but help them achieve "mental health" and that my professional role had little, if nothing to do with medicine!