The Brain vs. The Mind

 The American Psychiatric Association has decreed mental illnesses as medical conditions. Specifically, mental illnesses 
are health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental health is the foundation for emotions, thinking, communication, learning, resilience, hope and self-esteem. Mental health is also key to relationships, personal and emotional well-being and contributing to community or society.  

The definition of mental is that which relates to the mind or its disorders. So, what is the mind, and how does it differ from the brain? The widely accepted belief is that one we can see and the other is invisible. Here is a diagram from an online, educational site called BYJU:

Brain	Mind
Brain is the central organ of the human nervous system	Mind is a faculty that manifests itself in mental phenomena such as perception, thinking, sensation, reasoning, memory, etc.
It is made up of blood vessels and nerve cells.	It is not made up of any cells and is hypothetical.
It has a definite shape and structure.	It does not.
Brain coordinates, movements, feelings, and different functions of the body.	It refers to a person’s conscience, understanding and thought process.
You can touch the brain.	You cannot touch the mind.

We know enough about the functions of the brain to assign specific abilities to the different regions of its anatomical structures. The cerebrum controls speech, judgment, thinking and reasoning, problem-solving, emotions and learning, while the frontal lobe is involved in personality characteristics and decision-making. Moreover, Johns Hopkins reports that “New studies are exploring the cerebellum’s roles in thought, emotions and social
 Disturbances in sleep and appetite are the first telltale signs that a psychiatric condition is afoot. Furthermore, conditions like depression, anxiety, and mania are not simply people with disordered thinking; nay, the body also suffers. Panic attacks mimic cardiac arrest so skillfully that they send victims fleeing to the emergency room. Depression makes one as bedridden as the flu. Mania can keep one awake for days, just like a blast of meth. Digestive dysfunction, body aches, headaches, weight changes are common complaints. The fact of the matter is that the disturbances in thought and emotion that we call mental illness are just as physical as the common cold with an etiology of physical origin, and not some mystical concept of the mind. We delude ourselves that our ability to think means we have a mind that separates us from the animal kingdom. It doesn’t. Crows can “ponder the content of their minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans.” Studies of bird brains “show that intelligence/consciousness are grounded in connectivity and activity patterns ofneurons.” The entire concept of mental illness is deeply flawed. It is the root that feeds stigma because it is the progenitor of the belief that mental illness is not real. It becomes an invention of the self due to a moral flaw or lack of fortitude, from which grows the trees of discrimination that we plant in the Forest of Second Class Citizenship.