What we do know is that some medications work effectively for some people sometimes, and we know that untreated depression and anxiety can be deadly. We desperately want mental illnesses to be as objectively diagnosable, measurable, and treatable as something like diabetes. This is what I mean by expectations. When explaining how mental illnesses are real, people will sometimes say something like, “You would never shame someone for having cancer or ascribe their disease to bad character. So why would you shame someone for having a mental illness?”
