I think it is important to properly define what is wrong with you when you are suffering from a mental illness. Unfortunately many mental diseases the system will label you as a victim and patient, and this is not an empowering framework to view yourself. According to the bio-medical tradition, people who are mentally ill need to be fixed. Although I agree that measures should be taken to correct dangerous deviance of behaviour, at a certain point in the path of mental illness identifying yourself as a sick patient becomes as unhealthy as the illness itself. It is important to embrace your personhood apart from your condition. Otherwise, you run the risk of being condemned by labels. In traditional cultures, those individuals we considered mentally ill would often be taken out of the society to be trained as Shamans. There was a belief that altered mind states could offer insight into the nature of being. Perhaps more importantly, one could consider a mental illness as a period or path that one must traverse in order to fulfill one's life purpose. Viewed under such a lens, the life of a mentally ill person takes on more meaning. I have been exposed to too many people who sacrifice who they are for their illness. They become defined by their condition and sink deeper and deeper into the mire. Often mental illness is a prison for the mind, by to some extent there is control over how we view the prison... meaning must be applied to struggle or else all is lost. Below is a link to Terence Mckenna speaking on the relationship between schizophrenia and shamanism. Although I disagree with the level of romanticism he applies to such a horrid mental illness, I do think his evaluation of the Western psychiatric community is correct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEglHjd_gUQ
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