I agree with you, real mental illness is no joke.

However, there has been a tendency in recent years for people to ascribe behaviours to various "syndromes," behaviors that used to be called "acting like an idiot" at best and "criminal" at worst.

If anyone is "trivializing" mental illness, it's those who summon up the term to explain just about anything that they have done wrong. I don't have the exact numbers, but the number of officially classified syndromes listed by the psychiatric industry has doubled or tripled in the past decade or so.

There are a number of reasons for this. The most obvious is financial: if your problem has an official definition, then you become eligible for financial support from insurance companies or others.

The more subtle, cultural reason is, of course, the desire to avoid judgment for your actions. It's not my fault, I was crazy. This is used as an excuse for many things now.

Anne Heche's book is number 4 on Amazon right now. NOW has only recently backed off from its support of the woman who drowned her children. Rosie is not evil, or mentally ill, just an ordinary jerk. Yet would anyone be surprised if she came out and claimed she had clinical paranoia, which explained all her behavior and won her national sympathy?

BTW, I don't want to bring philosophy into this, but is it liberals or conservatives who typically exploit mental illness the most to advance their agenda?