I don't know if I get the gist of your post. It seems as if you are saying that because you can get a specific value and treat a condition with a single medication, that makes it a disease. On the other hand, having to identify the culprit out of over 50 possible neurotransmitters, in a trial and error fashion, makes mental illness less of a disease, something one can fix on their own.
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No dr would go say 'oh just try this type of insulin and if that doesn't work try this or we'll up the dosage' no you just look at the glucose meter and ya know what to do.
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It is evident you do not know anyone who is diabetic. It's not "looking at the glucose meter and knowing what to do." Diabetes is a horrible condition to deal with constantly.
To begin, there are many different types of insulin:
- Lantus
- Ultralente (U)
- Lente (L)
- NPH (NPH)
- Regular (R)
- Humalog
- Novolog
- 70/30 Humulin
- 70/30 Novolin
- 70/30 Novolog
- 50/50 Humulin
- 75/25 Humalog mix
Long-acting insulun (Ultralente or Lantus) is given the same time each day, irrespective of meals. Rapid-acting insulun (Humalog or Novolog) act withn minutes, when your blood sugar is out of control and needs to be stabilized, immediately. The mid-range action types (NPH or L) or the short-acting Regular will change on a meal-to-meal basis. You must anticipate the effect of what you are planning to eat in relation to what you've eaten already today. You must test before eating, calculate the number of units you anticipate you'll need, do the injection, eat exactly what you've dosed for, then recheck an hour or so later to calculate any unplanned fluctuation in your levels, then inject with the correct type of insulin to balance it out. Activity level, hidden ingredients in food, stress and time of day can have drastic effects on your blood sugar, resulting in adjustment of units, what combination of insulin must be given, and the number of injections required.
Now, if you do not have enough insulin available, your body will start to use fat for energy instead of glucose. This is confirmed by a urinalysis that will show if your body is producing ketones. A low level of ketones indicates your insulin level is getting critically low and must be adjusted immediately (again, by calculating the amount and type of insulin needed). Urine must be tested again in a few hours, to do the process all over again. If the ketone levels are high, your body is, in essence, poisoning itself. If your ketones are high in conjunction with high blood sugar levels, damage to the kidneys and heart begins, and exercising in this condition can result in a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure.
Sorry to go on and on, but it is essential to recognize any serious illness, be it mental or physical, results from a multitude of factors. Yes, if you have a headache, you take Advil. On the other hand, diabetes is not just a matter of testing your blood and taking a simple injection. No only does the treatment have to be individualized for each patient, a patient is rarely the same on a day-to-day (even hour-to-hour) basis. It's basically spending the rest of your life in a trial-and-error situation, with your life on the line. Likewise, mental illness is a disease that must be treated on an individual basis, with constant trial-and-error with treatment dosages and therapies. Even worse, mental illness is not quantifiable in any way, so a doctor cannot even use a labratory test to have as a starting point for treatment -- the most likely culprit must be addressed. If the patient doesn't get relief from the 1st treatment option, interplay between different medications and lack/overage of the responsible neurotransmitters must be considered. Situational factors, substance abuse, hormonal changes, activity levels, family support, diet and so forth can all contribute to the success of the drug therapy.
I apologize for my bluntness, but beginning from the incorrect premise that diabetes is a disease because it is simply treated from a single test value, while catagorizing mental illness as "not" a disease because it has multiple contributory factors treated on a trial and error basis is ridiculous. Not to mention dangerous and unkind.
Having an opinion is fine -- just make sure it is backed up with solid research.