Overview
“A disease like any other” is a common phrase used in mental health advocacy as an argument that mental health diagnoses should be treated the same as physical ailments. Marty Mann, one of the earlier female members of Alcoholics Anonymous, founded the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism to launch a public relations campaign that argued alcoholism is a “disease like any other” as well. At the time, stigma from the public and medical community alike made it harder for those struggling with substance use disorders to be seen as patients in need of medical help, from hospitals and government institutions alike. Ironically, the actual A.A. recovery philosophy assumes that alcohol use disorders are not like other disease and require a spiritual awakening to a Higher Power.
Context
Variations of this phrase go back to Hippocrates coming up with a natural cause to explain epilepsy rather than supernatural causes like divine possession or curses. Around the mid-20th century, medical and advocacy organizations in America began using the phrase as part of PR campaigns to destigmatize mental health conditions, including addiction. Unfortunately, this missed the mark and instead led people to think having mental health conditions meant the brain was fundamentally broken.
The medical community began shifting away from this framing. I myself am guilty of comparing addiction to something like diabetes when explaining the chronic and complex nature of health conditions that can be influenced by personal agency. Research shows that framing mental health issues as entirely physiological or structural can make clients more pessimistic about their chances of recovery, as they feel they might be structurally broken in a way they can’t change.
Most importantly, addiction and substance use have been increasingly seen as having strong relational components. If the problem is simply a chemical imbalance or an issue of willpower, then handling substance use becomes an individual’s burden, even if their environment introduces trauma and stressors that led to using substances for coping in the first place. Philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists have increasingly added humanistic perspectives that contextualize substance use within a specific set of cultures, traditions, enviornments, and institutions in which a network of people operate.
In these studies and papers though, authors are generally quick to note that some people benefit personally from adopting the perspective that addiction is truly a disease like any other, for instance in the context of AA meetings, and that it’s fine for people to articulate their own experiences in their own words. Issues come up when institutions and norms adopt a perspective and impose it on people who don’t find it helpful or decision-makers losing the full context of the concepts involved.