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It could be argued that mental health is such a big subject in its own right that this site should not accept such questions and should stick to physical health. Should we accept mental health questions or not?

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  • Related: Merge Mental Health into Health
    – kenorb
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 15:26
  • How about reconsidering which answer to accept?
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Apr 27, 2015 at 21:10
  • @FranckDernoncourt why?
    – Ooker
    Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 9:48
  • The accepted answer used to be a different one
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 11:28
  • so mental health questions are officially on topic then?
    – Pinocchio
    Commented Oct 6, 2016 at 20:58

3 Answers 3

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Based on the comments to the other answer I propose: mental health questions are on-topic for the following reasons:

  • mental health is part of global health
  • in some cases, it's difficult to draw a line between the two areas
  • there are several interactions between psychological processes and physical-organic phenomena
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  • What answer are you referring to?
    – Ooker
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 17:22
  • so mental health questions are officially on topic then?
    – Pinocchio
    Commented Oct 6, 2016 at 20:58
3

Personally, I find mental health things like psychopathy or narcissism very interesting topics.

So I would vote to include these type of questions.

On the other hand, there is already Cognitive Sciences.

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  • 1
    so mental health questions are officially on topic then?
    – Pinocchio
    Commented Oct 6, 2016 at 21:12
-6

No, this site was was created on the premise of serving medical health. There is nothing in the proposal suggesting this extend into physiological or mental health issues, and we did not solicit support from that community. That is simply a different scope of expertise … well, not exactly "simply" — it's a complicated issue — but this site should focus primarily on issues of physical health.

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  • 10
    How are you distinguishing medical health from physiological health?
    – Jez
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 20:19
  • 1
    I'm not (that's what my last sentence was about). We can say that this site isn't about mental health, and stick to the physical — but there's a fuzzy middle ground where body and brain chemistry crosses into purely psychological health issue that we'll have to explore when it comes up in actual practice. For now, I'm just saying that the field of "mental health" is not really what this site was intended for.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 20:30
  • 3
    I think at times issues in one area can cause issues in the other so it would be hard to separate the areas
    – Joe W
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 23:05
  • @JoeW e.g. psychoneuroimmunology. Hard to draw a line indeed, if one wants to draw one.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Apr 2, 2015 at 0:55
  • Sorry to be the typo police, but I think this is actually confusing people - do you mean “psychological” (or perhaps “psychiatric”) rather than “physiological”? The latter refers to that which pertains to normal functions of any part of the body (as distinguished from pathophysiologic(al) - abnormal functioning). Physiology is not specific to the brain or mental health, and I think we would all agree that it’s on topic here.
    – Susan
    Commented Apr 4, 2015 at 16:34
  • 1
    so mental health questions are officially on topic then?
    – Pinocchio
    Commented Oct 6, 2016 at 21:12

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