Why are schizophrenia and bipolar considered mental illness

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but autism is not?

I apologize in advance that this topic is such as it is but as someone diagnosed with both bipolar and ASD I've been trying to figure out. What exactly is the difference between the two? As I understand it, they both have abnormalities in brain functioning. They both have measurable differences in MRI scans. Why is one considered illness and the other is not?

I don't know a whole lot about how bipolar and schizophrenia work in your brain, but I do know about autism.

Autism is not considered a mental illness because it is considered a neurobiological disorder. That probably doesn't help much, but that's how it is. Autism is a physical re-wiring of the brain prior to birth. A mental illness is a "disease of the mind". Autism has nothing to do with the mind but the actual brain itself.

What's the difference between the mind and the brain? To me they are synonyms. I can see a case of argument that autism isn't because the autistic's brain is wired that way at birth but schizophrenia and bipolar are both highly genetic which means their brain is also at least predisposed to being that way.

I'm really not trying to imply that autism is an illness. I'm just trying to understand why one is considered an illness and the other isn't.

Maybe, autism or autistic traits only form a base for mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar. In other words, a person on the spectrum might be more susceptible to such mental illnesses because of different wiring.

Or, schizophrenia and bipolar might have more conspicuous negative effects on the individual and the people around than ASD alone.

I don't know of any studies indicating that people with ASD are more susceptible to MI. It's possible, I'm just not aware. The second point is a good thought. Maybe bipolar and schizophrenia influence behavior more? I don't know.

I sometimes wonder if it's just a matter of the direction the different awareness campaigns have gone. Schizophrenia is one of those "scary" mental illnesses and it benefits from the comparison to cancer, while people with autism benefit more from it not being compared to illnesses due to self-esteem issues?

I think it's because Autism is more of a structural thing. The way the brain itself is put together, which parts are dominant, how thoughts are processed.

This, while mental illness is more of a chemical thing. Neurotransmitters are missing or malfunctioning, etc.

That's why mental illness tends to respond well to medication - it readjusts the chemicals in the brain to bring it closer to NT.

In order to treat an autestic, in theory, you would have to give them an entirely new brain. If you change the chemestry in an autestic's mind, all you are doing is creating a drugged out autie.