Since normal mental function is determined by mere statistics--that is to say, the concept of sanity is based on the way most people behave--is it morally acceptable to treat people with what are perceived to be mental problems?

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Let's leave mental health aside for the moment and ask: would it make sense to imagine a situation in which a solid majority of people were physically ill? The answer seems pretty clearly to be yes. For example: we can imagine a pandemic flu infecting a majority of all humanity. Or for that matter, we can imagine a majority of people having some chronic disease like asthma. Physical health isn't a purely statistical concept. Without pretending to put together a fully satisfactory definition, we can presumably agree that whether someone is physically healthy has to do with their functioning. Statistics may have something to do with this (after all, we use statistical techniques in trying to sort out what it's reasonable to expect from a human body), but there's no simple equation between "physically healthy" and "near the statistical average."

We can also add: people with, for example, above average lung capacity aren't thereby considered ill, while people with lung capacity well below average are usually considered to be ill, and lowering everyone else's lung capacity wouldn't be a way to "cure" them.

Once that's clear, it should be clear that we can say the same for mental health. We can perfectly well imagine most people being mentally ill. It could be something in the water; it could be widespread, highly stressful conditions that are just too much for us to bear. But if most people started showing symptoms of severe bipolar illness, for example, I don't think we'd re-define "mental health." We'd see it as a very scary crisis.

Treating the mentally ill does raise special problems, because we usually think that medical treatment calls for informed consent, and that can be problematic when the patient is mentally ill. We also think that in dealing with mental illness, we're closer to matters that bear on a person's very identity. But while these questions have to be handled carefully, they aren't the same as the worry that we are stigmatizing people simple for falling outside some statistical norm.

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