Confrontations

Some thoughts I have been ruminating about while waiting for my glimpse of inspiration for this post....

..what is the average Joe's (if such a person exists, that is) conception of mental illness?
...forget the average Joe, what is YOUR idea of mental illness? When would you consider a person to be mentally ill? Think in terms of behaviours or thoughts displayed by a mentally ill person and use these to construct an image of such a person.
....so now that you have an image of a mentally ill person, do you think you will be likely to use it if you were to deal with a mentally ill person?
.....now, can you try imagining your face in place of the image you constructed, with those thoughts running through your head, and those behaviours being your behaviours, and you being mentally ill?

How easy or difficult was it for you to construct this image?
How easy was it for you to slip from a detached construction to being personally involved with mental illness?
What are the thoughts and behaviours you attributed to the person with the mental illness?
Did you make her/his mind to be a confused maze without many exit points?
Did you regard the symptoms as volatile, uncontrollable (florid symptoms, as the medical professionals say)?
Did you gloss over the image?

Mental illness encompasses a diaspora of states of the human mind. It is OK if you attributed crazy, illogical behaviour to your prototype of the mentally ill person. It is OK because the mental states of extreme suspicion, paranoia, weird sensations and perceptions, rigidity, etc. are too alien to contemplate. But the human brain also produces many other mental states. We all have, at some point, experienced varying intensities of depression, elation, anxiety, fears, ambivalence, and what-name-you. So what accounts for the hesitation in conceptualizing these emotions to also be capable of leading to mental illnesses?
What lies at the core of your view of the distinction between normal and abnormal behaviour?