How to Explain Mental Illness to Someone Without It

How do you explain mental illness? How do you explain a brain disorder to a person who has no experience with psychiatric disorders? What can you say to make other people understand that mental illness is just that--an illness that affects the mind? Here are my tips on how to explain mental illness.

How I Explain Mental Illness

There are many different ways to explain mental illness, from the technical explanation that serotonin and dopamine levels are not what they need to be to the simple, "It's just an illness that affects the brain, just like diabetes affects the pancreas."

In this video, I use the analogy of a circuit to describe mental illness and treatment.

How have you explained mental illness to other people?